| Scheduled to be implemented in August 2008, it calls for uprooting 200,000 hectares of excess vines, pushing subsidies toward marketing instead of price guarantees, and changing traditions that go back generations. About €1 Billion are to be spent in compensating farmers to dig up the vines.
Initial plans to dig up 400,000 hectares of vines, 10 per cent of all Europe's growth, were watered down after vigorous campaigning from traditional producers in France , Italy , Spain and Portugal .
EU agriculture ministers will now debate the proposals. Europe 's unreformed wine sector, which is the world's largest, produces a wine lake big enough to consume a huge part of the EU's annual wine-subsidy budget of 1.3 billion Euros, used to distill unwanted alcohol into industrial products such as cleaning fluid.
France , Spain and Italy are the main targets of these reforms. As the world's largest three wine-makers by volume, these countries together account for 80 per cent of the EU vine area, that currently totals around 3.4 million hectares.
"We need to look at the market. We need to look at what consumers want and why they are buying more of the imported wines than the excellent European wines," she said. At the current rate, 15 per cent of wine production will become surplus by 2010.
EU's main farming organisation is already explaining why it opposed the major outlines of her project, claiming she was caving in to commercial practices of the New World . "The core of Fischer Boel's proposal is to introduce the New World model which does not put the farmer, the vintner or mankind at the centre of things - but the company instead," said Jean-Luis Piton of the Copa-Cogeca farmers' association, representing Chianti, Rioja, Burgundy and Chablis.
Says Joaquim Madeira, President of the National Association of Viticulture Denominations of Origin in Portugal , "Quality wines have been built around a tradition using certain rules, and these should be kept and respected. This cannot be changed just like that."
At present, the grapes must be produced and processed in the strict area of the wine name in order to qualify for the name of a designation of origin. Under the planned changes, only the grapes' place of origin will have to be referred to, and 85 or 100 per cent of the grapes from that origin will be enough for a wine to qualify for one of the EU's two categories of protected names
Ms. Boel is undeterred by the angry protests. "I'm not naive. I realise that the wine sector is very emotional and that many will obviously have objections to my ideas, but this should not distract us from the fact that a reform is crucial," she emphasizes, adding "We are actually losing market share to dynamic producers in other parts of the world, consumption is falling and imports are increasing by about 10 per cent."
Growers are also angry at the new labeling rules which allow only the recording of the grape origin and not the location where the wine is made. This could mean traditional small producers losing out to giant processing factories.
European tradition, though, has already been under pressure for over a decade as increasing imports, over-production and decreasing consumption have increasingly put Euro vintners in trouble.
Another controversial element in the plan that has already annoyed several non-Mediterranean wine-producing countries is a proposal to ban the use of sugar in wine manufacture.
In many cooler areas of Europe , it has been standard practice for centuries to increase the alcoholic strength of local wines by adding sucrose from beet or cane sugar. Ms Boel's plan would force sugar-using winemakers to use unfermented grape juice instead.
Enriching wine with sugar costs about a third as much as using concentrated grape musts and is a traditional winemaking method in much of north-central and Eastern Europe, in countries such as Austria , Germany , Luxembourg and several of the former communist states like Hungary that joined the EU in 2004.
But a sugar ban might be a problem for France, the world's largest winemaker. Champagne producers, based in France 's most northerly Appellation Controlée area, have a long tradition of adding sugar, although famous red and white wines from the country's warmer southern regions are sugar-free.
Techniques such as the use of wood-chips to give wine an oaky flavour will be permitted to enable European makers to compete with the fast-produced Australian chardonnays, short-circuiting traditional oak barrel ageing.
The Commission also wants a budget of €120 million per year, funded partially by the EU and partially by national sources, for a marketing campaign to increase market share abroad.
She has found an ally in The Comité Européen des Entreprises Vins, a wine trade association which has welcomed the proposed reform. Lamberto Vallarino Gancia, the head of the organisation, said: "If we wish to remain world leader, we need a market-oriented approach allowing the companies and the European wines to be more competitive both in the internal market and in the external markets."
The European Union's wine policy was last reformed in 1999.
Resource: http://news.scotsman.com
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