Based on the example of Geographical Indications (GI) for agricultural products in France, this article addresses the issue of greening sectoral public policies. It describes the successive attempts by an increasing number of social actors (including farmers) to “marry” GI and the environment in the nineties, by introducing compulsory criteria of environmental friendship in the policy. Their repeated failures can be considered as surprising because representations about GIs are usually very close to ideas like the ‘terroir’, traditions and environmental friendship. Such failures result from the fact that the policy debate takes place on narrow sectoral arenas, weakly publicized, in which one single segment of the Ministry of agriculture holds considerable resources and acts as a veto player. The paper then addresses the shift that took place through the ‘Grenelle de l’environnement’, by transferring the bargaining process to a cross-sectoral and highly publicized arena, imposing considerable political constraints on opponents. Through this example, the paper illustrates and outlines the impacts that the configuration of the policy debate (institutional setting), the degree of openness of the policy process, and the policy instruments themselves, can have on the introduction of environment friendly criteria in sectoral policies.