Brussels, 11/07/2016 (Agence Europe) - Thirteen EU member states recently sent a note to the European Commission calling on it not to water down the current rules which protect wines with geographical indications (EUROPE 11484).
Work currently being done by the European Commission to simplify wine sector rules are lacking in transparency and could result in a spreading of texts that is detrimental to designations in this sector, argue 13 member states (Austria, Cyprus, Germany, Greece, Spain, France, Hungary, Italy, Luxembourg, Malta, Portugal, Slovenia, and Slovakia) in a note seen by EUROPE.
The 13 delegations call for the specifics of the wine-making sector to be maintained, and, in particular, the labelling rules linked to the quality policy. They demand that no change should be made to: - the position where it is impossible to label a geographic name for wines without a geographical indication; - the protection of traditional terms and of indication of the holding; - the reservation of certain production methods to PDO or PGI (bottled-fermented, traditional method, crémant, bottle shapes, etc.); - the measure of temporary labelling that allows the specifications to come into force as soon as they are transmitted to the European Commission, and this for both new applications for protections and applications for modifications.
These 13 countries stress the importance of bringing all the rules on labelling, geographical indications and traditional terms together in a single text. Separating labelling and geographical indications is “artificial” for this sector, they say. The signatories of the note call for the merging of all of the provisions of the secondary legislation that apply to wine in a single text (split in two parts: implementing act and delegated act) and for “perfect visibility” on the timetable for adoption of the texts, the objectives pursued and a large degree of coherence between the work of the different groups. (Original version in French by Lionel Changeur)