The Commission wants to resolve that problem with a common, bloc-wide label in the form of a QR code.
The package ignores the idea of cancer warnings on wine, which DG SANTE had planned to propose during the last Commission mandate, but dropped due to anger from wine-producing countries like Italy, France and Spain. Ireland on its own eventually adopted the law, which takes effect next year.
- Fighting climate change
Extreme weather is decimating harvests, whether through floods, droughts or sudden and unseasonal shifts in temperature. This attracts grape moths, mites and mealybugs that spread plant diseases like downy and powdery mildew. The damage is eye-watering, with several countries last year suffering their worst output since 2017 (Belgium’s dropped 64 percent).
Meanwhile, many viticultural regions guzzle scarce water and spray ample doses of pesticides made of fossil fuels. In light of this, Brussels wants to strengthen the sector’s resilience to climate change and boost its role for mitigation as well.
It’ll primarily do that by hiking its investment support, so that countries can go from recouping 50 percent of their climate-friendly wine investments to 80 percent.
- For winemakers, it’s a drop in the ocean
Drafted in double time, the package has been received well by associations, although they have identified shortcomings.
“We greatly appreciate the responsive approach” but “the proposal can be improved on a number of points,” declared Riccardo Ricci Curbastro, president of the European Federation of Origin Wines.
Ignacio Sánchez Recarte, secretary general of the Comité Européen des Entreprises Vins, called it “a good legal package,” yet said it would “fall short if a trade war involving wine erupts between the EU and the U.S.,” noting that Donald Trump’s threat to impose 200 percent tariffs on EU wine was already “costing EU wine companies €100 million per week.”
