Using <p> tag

My UI designer has <p> tags in the html files that we use with CustomLayout. I can't seem to find a way to use the <p> tags because Vaadin creates div wrap-arounds for each element, so

<p>This is the text</p>

becomes

<p>
</p>
<div>This is the text</div>

The workaround that we've devised is for the UI designer to define a style class called "paragraph" and assign it to each div. We were wondering if this is the appropriate workaround or if there are other ways to use a <p> element.