Bloated EU wine sector needs reform, commission says
The European Commission agreed on Wednesday (7 June) to pay for France and Italy to turn 560 million litres of their wine into bio fuels and industrial alcohol, highlighting the EU executive's warnings that the bloc's wine producers need reform.
"Crisis distillation is becoming a depressingly regular feature of our common market organisation for wine. While it offers temporary assistance to producers, it does not deal with the core of the problem – that Europe is producing too much wine for which there is no market," said EU agriculture commissioner Mariann Fischer Boel.
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The EU, which makes and drinks around 60 percent of the world's wine, has distilled an average of 10 percent of its total production annually since 2000, reports Bloomberg. In 2004, distillation programmes cost €512 million - or more than 40 percent of the total wine budget.
"That is why a deep-rooted reform of the sector is needed urgently. We must increase the competitiveness of the EU's wine producers, strengthen the reputation of EU quality wine as the best in the world, recover old markets and win new ones," Ms Fischer Boel said in a statement.
A commission wine committee involving member state representatives agreed to the crisis distillation move after the main wine producing EU countries pushed for help.
France had requested the right to distil 400 million litres of wine but was only granted the right to 300 million litres. Italy was granted the right to distil 260 million litres.
Further demands from Spain and Greece are still under examination, according to the commission, covering 30 and 50 million litres of overproduction, respectively.
Ms Fischer Boel said she will be coming forward with proposals for reform on 22 June.
Both table and quality wine will be distilled. The proposals still have to be formally adopted by the commission but are set to apply from 29 June for France and 3 July for Italy.