Brussels, 19/04/2012 (Agence Europe) - Although “strong arguments” and “innovative solutions” requiring “adjustments” have been put to the European Commission, “I will take my responsibilities”, said European Agriculture Commissioner Dacian Ciolos at the start of the first meeting of the high-level group on vine planting rights, in Brussels on Thursday 19 April (see EUROPE 10597). This meeting provided the opportunity for the representatives of the member states and the professional organisations to present their initial stances on the removal of this regime scheduled for 1 January 2016, with the possibility of keeping it in place until 31 December 2018.
Fifteen countries, which do not quite make up a qualified majority within the Council of the EU, officially oppose the abolition of vine planting rights. This pushed the agriculture commissioner to agree to set up the high-level group, which is chaired by José Manuel Silva Rodriguez, Director-General for Agriculture of the European Commission. “The question is not whether or not we maintain the existing system, but, if we do keep the concept, how we can be more efficient than in the past”, Dacian Ciolos warned in late March.
The group is set to hold three further meetings between now and the end of the year (26 June, in September and in November) and then present recommendations the Commission will be able to use as its basis to present any proposal in 2013.
The European commissioner took pains to remind the members of the high-level group of the main elements of the reform of the sector adopted on 29 April 2008: uprooting plan (160,000 effective hectares), stepping up restructuring measures, end of “production destruction” tools to regulate the market, emphasis on promoting quality, creating national budgetary envelopes and decision on planting rights.
Stating that it is not at the moment a question of reforming the reform, the European commissioner said that the definition of the CAP post-2013 does not rule out defining “sectorial approaches in parallel”. He is therefore awaiting “recommendations” from the high-level group, which will help to “feed into the reflection” to be carried out by the Commission, in parallel with the report on the implementation of the reform of the sector, which will also be presented by the end of the year. Beyond “political and simplistic” statements, the EU needs a realistic evaluation of “what could and could not be a system for managing vineyard areas in the context of today's market realities”, Ciolos concluded, stressing the need for a “new, modern vision of the role of the public authorities and professional organisations in management of the markets”. (LC/transl.fl)