Brussels, 02/05/2014 (Agence Europe) - The planned free-trade agreement between the EU and the United States could end up undermining the European agricultural model. This is the warning to be made by the European wine-making regions at their forthcoming plenary session, to be held in Luxembourg on 9 May. According to AREV (Assembly of European Wine Regions), such an agreement cannot be anything other than detrimental to the wine-making sector, unless the EU secures considerable changes in the American position.
The 5th session of negotiations between the EU and the United States towards the conclusion of a transatlantic trade and investment partnership, to be held in Arlington (Virginia), will be given over to regulatory issues, sanitary and phytosanitary issues, intellectual property rights and the environment. It is against this backdrop that AREV is preparing to adopt, at its 22nd plenary session, a resolution warning of the consequences of a Euro-American agreement of this kind for the future developments of European agriculture. AREV believes that any tariff concessions in this framework would have a negligeable effect compared to the effects of fluctuations in the euro-dollar exchange rate.
American concessions which are vital but unlikely given that, already, the agreement between the two parties on the trade in wine concluded by the European Commission in 2005 is not working. AREV will also point out that the US left the International Organisation of Vine and Wine (OIV), which lays down the standards on which those of the EU are based, in 2001. AREV believes that, in the framework of any transatlantic partnership, Washington should be obliged to respect the wine-making practices recognised by the OIV for their sales of wines to the European market.
According to the European wine-making regions, the Americans should also give up, both in their own country and for export purposes, a raft of semi-generic European geographical indications (chianti, champagne, etc.) and traditional references (château, clos, etc.). These concessions are unlikely on the part of the United States. If the country does not observe the agreements of the WTO on trade-related intellectual property rights (TRIPS) and does not rejoin the OIV, negotiations for a free-trade agreement will go nowhere, the AREV resolution stresses. (LC)