Brussels, 14/09/2006 (Agence Europe) - Most of the members of the parliamentary committee on agriculture criticised, on 12 September, the main elements of the suggested reform of the common market organisation for wine, especially the grubbing-up within five years of 400,000 hectares of vineyard, the suppression of all market management mechanisms and the intention attributed to the European Commission of wanting to authorise imports of must from third countries and a blend of Community wines with foreign wines. The report by Katerina Batzeli (PES, Greece) should be adopted in committee on 13 November before being discussed in plenary in December.
Agriculture Commissioner Mariann Fischer Boel defended the Commission's proposals stressing, among other things, that grubbing-up measures will allow a balance to be struck on the market and will, above all, help wine growers who, without the policy, would be forced to leave a sector encountering “enormous difficulties” finding themselves “without a penny in their pockets”. The rapporteur presented the broad lines of her draft report (which will no doubt be amended in committee and also probably in plenary), asserting: “we do not agree” with the Commission's approach on grubbing-up and very much disagree with the plan to authorised imports of third country grape must and a blend of Community and foreign wines. The rapporteur does not challenge how useful it is to have grubbing-up measures but is opposed to the definitive abandonment of vineyards being presented as the focal point of the reform. Her draft report recommends controlled grubbing-up by national and regional authorities, restricted in the following cases: - vineyards with low productivity that cannot recuperate their potentials; - cases that are linked to the integration of vine producers into the early retirement scheme; - and vineyards that cannot produce quality or commercial wines. Ms Fischer Boel confirmed her wish to do away with Community market management measures, but pointed out that the Member States may, if they so wish, finance effective and acceptable crisis management measures. Ms Batzeli suggests converting the four current distillation measures into a single measure for compulsory distillation (based on current subsidies for distilling by-products), which would make it possible to gradually improve the market and support farmers' income at the same time as protecting the environment.