Brussels’ battle over whether plant-based foods can be sold as “veggie burgers” and “vegan sausages” ended the year in stalemate on Wednesday, after talks between EU countries and the European Parliament collapsed without a deal.

French centre-right lawmaker Céline Imart, a grain farmer from southern France and the architect of the naming ban, arrived determined to lock in tough restrictions on plant-based labels, according to three people involved.

Her proposal, dismissed as “unnecessary” inside her own political family, was tucked inside a largely unrelated reform of the EU’s farm-market rulebook. It slipped through weeks of talks untouched and unmentioned, only reemerging in the final stretch — by which point even Paul McCartney had asked Brussels to let veggie burgers be.

The Wednesday meeting quickly veered off course.

Officials said Imart moved to reopen elements of the text that negotiators believed had already wrapped up, including sensitive rules for powerful farm cooperatives. She then sketched out several possible fallbacks on dairy contracts — a politically charged issue for many countries — but without settling on a clear line the rest of the Parliament team could rally behind.

“And then she introduced new terms out of nowhere,” one Parliament official said, after Imart proposed adding “liver” and “ham” to the list of protected meat names for the first time.

“It was very messy,” another Parliament official said.

EU countries, led in the talks by Denmark, said they simply had no mandate to move — not on the naming rules and not on dairy contracts.

With neither side giving ground, the discussions ground to a halt. “We did not succeed in reaching an agreement,” Danish Agriculture Minister Jacob Jensen said.

Imart insisted that the gap could still be bridged. Dairy contracts and meat-related names “still call for further clarification,” she said in a written statement, arguing that “tangible progress” had been made and that “the prospect of an agreement remains close,” with negotiations due to resume under Cyprus in January.

Dutch Green lawmaker Anna Strolenberg, who was in the room, said she was relieved: “It’s frustrating that we keep losing time on a veggie burger ban — but at least it wasn’t traded for weaker contracts [for dairy farmers].”

For now, that means veggie burgers, vegan nuggets and other alternative-protein products will keep their familiar names — at least until Cyprus picks up the file in the New Year and Brussels’ oddest food fight resumes.