EU wine production risks industrialisation

Published: 27 September, 2011

The EU's decision to phase out planting rights from 2015 will lead to a more industrialised wine sector and result in serious supply imbalances, according to a leading European farmers union, Copa Cogeca.

The 2009 EU wine reform decreed that planting rights, which prevent vineyard expansion without approval from ruling bodies, would be gradually phased out from 2015. Copa Cogeca and 12 EU member states including France, Germany, Italy and Spain are now calling for these planting rights to be maintained.

Cogeca president Paolo Bruni said 'Liberalisation of planting rights would risk mutating towards a more industrialised wine-growing sector and result in serious imbalances'. He claimed the abolition of planting rights could have wider consequences: 'the whole system would come under threat and the high quality of EU wines would be at risk, causing the EU to lose serious market shares.'

Indeed, Europe has already lost significant market share to new world wine producers. In the period 1986-90, the new world accounted for just 3% of global sales; by 2008, the figure increased to 30%, according to the OIV.

English wine producers successfully campaigned against EU planting restrictions. Bob Lindo, former chair of the UKVA, said, 'Balancing supply and demand is a universal wine problem, but controlling production within the EU ignores the fact that the rest of the world is unfettered by such controls.'

Copa-Cogeca is calling on the EU Commission to release a proposal by the end of the year to maintain EU planting rights in the wine sector, and to overturn the decision to phase them out.

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