Brussels, 07/12/2009 (Agence Europe) - During the “Vignerons d'Europe” conference on 5-6 December in Montecatini, Tuscany, Xavier de Volontat, the president of the Confédération européenne des vignerons independents (CEVI) warned participants about the dangers created by successive simplifications of regulation in the wine sector.
CEVI is concerned that the common market organisation (CMO) of the wine sector in the single CMO will make all specific regulation on wine disappear. Wine is “drowning in a sea of provisions involving cereals, eggs and pork meat, for example”, decried Xavier de Volontat. He added that “under cover of legal simplification and administrative harmonisation, the whole legal set up is being unstitched that framed the specificity of our product, that differentiated it, that recognised - and so in a way that protected - its difference”.
He also stated that with regard to the other reforms of the same dimension, such as food product labelling, “we are fighting tooth and nail to obtain a labelling exemption for energy value and ingredients in wine”. He also posed the question of whether it was necessary in terms of energy value and ingredients to treat wine in the same way as jam, yoghurt and peas.
Xavier de Volontat asserted that it was crucial to maintain the difference for the treatment of wine: “How can Europe, the historical cradle of wine, deny to such a point and even bury the cultural specificity of wine?” CEVI represents independent wine producers from the following countries: Portugal, Spain, France, Switzerland, Slovenia, Luxembourg, Italy and Hungary (http://www.cevi-eciw.eu ). (L.C./transl.fl)