It is known that it is impossible to distinguish a natural diamond from a lab-grown one with the naked eye.
Is the legislation adopted at the European Union level required to prevent a potential confusion between the two types of these precious stones? The diamond industry sees this as an urgent need, but the lobby has not succeeded in getting the European Commission to understand this.
The highest executive body of the European Union considered it inappropriate to take measures to force the sellers of synthetic diamonds to disclose their origin to their clients. “The European Commission does not intend to propose specific European rules for the sale of diamonds,” the media office of the European Commission said.
Thus, the European jewellery lobby lost the ‘battle’ with Brussels, although it did not abandon its claims.
The Belgian members of the European Parliament - Frédérique Ries, Hilde Vautmans and Kris Peeters - applied to the European Commission and demanded to develop the EU legislation to differentiate between natural diamonds naturally formed in the depths of the Earth's mantle billions of years ago and their synthetic clones that are massively grown in a lab environment.
In the cover letter sent in May 2019, the parliamentarians gave reasons for the industry players’ complaints because of ‘a growing number of questionable sales practices that mislead consumers’. Pointing to the legal vacuum on this issue, the MEPs asked the European Commission to develop clear, European-wide rules for distinguishing between the two types of gemstones.
The international community has recognized the ISO 18323 2015 standard (‘Jewellery - Consumer confidence in the diamond industry’), which allows differentiating between natural and synthetic diamonds. The Belgian MEPs proposed to introduce this standard into the relevant EU regulation.
In response, the European Commission told that it did not have the authority to turn the ISO standard into the ‘binding European legislation’. At the same time, Brussels pointed out that the current EU consumer protection legislation applies to the sale of polished diamonds as well.
The law, in particular, obliges sellers to provide an average consumer with the information to make an informed decision when making a purchase and prohibits deceiving and/or misleading the customer.
However, according to the European Federation of Jewellery (EFJ), the European Commission simply did not heed the industry's concerns despite the well-reasoned arguments presented by its experts.
Mélanie Lamaison, a consultant at EFJ comprising about 40,000 companies, comments on the situation to L'Echo that the current (European) legislation is imperfect because the consumers should control the observance of their own rights when choosing a stone.
In the transactions between the professionals, synthetic diamonds are traded 20-40% cheaper than natural ones. In the situation with an average consumer, the absence of the relevant EU regulation allows a seller to sell a lab-grown stone as a natural diamond.
Alex Shishlo for Rough&Polished
