Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) measures designed to boost the competitiveness of winegrowers are weak in terms of their design and implementation, and fail to meet the CAP’s environmental objectives, criticised the Court of Auditors on Monday 25 September in a special report on the restructuring and planting of vineyards in the EU.
Every year, Europe pays out some 500 million euros to winegrowers to help them restructure their vineyards and boost their competitiveness. Since 2016, they have also been able to apply for permission to plant additional vines, the idea being to control the growth in production potential (1% per year maximum) while avoiding oversupply.
For Joëlle Elvinger, the member of the Court responsible for the audit, “EU aid has no clear impact on the competitiveness of winegrowers and is limited in terms of environmental ambition”.
The restructuring measure, according to the EU Court of Auditors, represents more than €5 billion over the period 2014-2023. The framework underpinning the restructuring measure lacks appropriate definitions, coherent strategies and relevant indicators, the report states. The five Member States visited by the auditors (Czech Republic, Greece, Spain, France and Italy) funded all eligible applications without applying any criteria to select the projects most likely to promote competitiveness. They have also financed projects that have not led to any obvious structural change. Neither the Commission nor the Member States visited examine how the projects contribute to the objective of competitiveness, and the beneficiaries are not required to explain how their restructuring action has enabled them to increase their competitiveness, is the criticism from the Court of Auditors.
The planting authorisation scheme is designed to prevent oversupply by limiting growth in the wine-growing area to 1% per year (a measure extended for a further 15 years until 2045). The Court of Auditors found that no impact analysis had been carried out before the co-legislators proposed and adopted the 1% ceiling for growth in the area under vines at national level, and that Member States can authorise much higher growth at regional/local level and are not required to carry out an analysis of the impact of this growth. In the auditors’ view, the planting authorisation scheme puts a ceiling on the total wine-growing area in the EU, but without limiting production, which risks thwarting the scheme’s objective of avoiding oversupply. In addition, when granting authorisations, the Member States visited applied few eligibility and priority criteria linked to competitiveness. Still on this point, the Court of Auditors considers that the proportional distribution of authorisations for new plantings could be detrimental to the objective of competitiveness in certain Member States where the beneficiaries, having been granted authorisations for very small areas, cannot plan for the future.
The measures in question (restructuring, authorisation) took only partial account of environmental protection, despite the scale of the funding involved. The five Member States visited had not assessed the expected environmental impact of their national aid programmes.
The Court of Auditors also considers that the level of environmental ambition remains limited during the 2023-2027 programming period. Cross-compliance has been abolished for beneficiaries of the restructuring measure. In addition, Member States are only required to allocate at least 5% of the wine budget to climate and environmental objectives. A rate that the auditors consider surprisingly low, given that under the greening of the CAP, 40% of all agricultural expenditure must target climate objectives. See the EU Court of Auditors report: https://aeur.eu/f/8qm (Original version in French by Lionel Changeur)