Brussels, 20/02/2006 (Agence Europe) - The European Commission met representatives of the European wine sector in Brussels on 16 February. In early Summer, the Commission is due to adopt a communication on the reform of the common organisation of the market (COM) in wine, presenting the different options possible to improve competitiveness in a sector in the grip of a deep crisis. “It's obvious that we have to change, we have to do it now and we have to go for a solid and lasting reform,” said Agriculture Commissioner Mariann Fischer Boel. She then set out three directions in which she hoped to go. Firstly, she wants to increase the competitiveness of the EU's wine producers, strengthen the reputation of EU quality wine as “the best in the world”, recover old markets and win new ones in the EU and elsewhere. Secondly, she said that a wine regime, operating through clear, simple rules, was needed to ensure balance between supply and demand. And thirdly, the EU, she said, needed a wine regime that preserves the best of its wine production traditions and reinforces the social and environmental fabric of many rural areas. According to the Commissioner some of the existing tools, measures and rules related to planting rights, restructuring, oenological practices, labelling, and various kinds of distillation had to be updated. She also said that it was necessary to go further and take a look at the new principles which now operate in much of the rest of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), such as decoupling (single payments not linked to volume of production) and cross-compliance (aid provided on condition that certain criteria, principally environmental, are met). The main ambition of the reform was not to save money, assured Mrs Fischer Boel, but to ensure that the 15 billion euro which the EU spends every year was spent “in the most productive way”. The Commissioner pointed out that in 2002, the EU exported 20% more wine than it did on average each year in the period 1986 to 1990. At the same time, however, American exports multiplied by 4, those of Australia and Chile by 19 each and those of South Africa by 47. The huge increase in sales of wine from these countries of the “new world” as well as lifestyle changes in the EU, where wine drinking is declining, have put great constraints on current EU policy, stressed the Commissioner. Mrs Fischer Boel also spoke of the millions of hectolitres of wine that have to be taken off the market through crisis distillation. “Too often the only image left with our citizens of the EU policy on wine is 'the EU wine lake',” concluded the Commissioner.