The internationalization of geographical indications lags notably behind that of traditional intellectual property Bilateral cooperation acts as a vital initiative to promote internationalization by enabling mutual recognition and protection through the selection of highquality geographical indicationsThe ChinaEU geographical indication agreement is the most important bilateral cooperation agreement in recent yearsThe continuous differenceindifferences model is constructed based on this agreement for evaluating bilateral cooperation effectsThe results show that bilateral cooperation not only generates significant trade promotion effects, but also exhibits heterogeneity The export promotion effect is more significant in China’s inland and lowurbanized areas, and the import promotion effect is more significant across Belt and Road Initiative countries Therefore, it is essential to deepen the ChinaEU cooperation on geographical indications Meanwhile, the qualitydriven mechanism and trade promotion effect of bilateral cooperation should be leveraged to foster highstandard and scaled development of geographical indication industriesThis will spur the generation of new quality productive forces in agriculture and offset adverse impacts of rising trade protectionism on agricultural development