Brussels, 13/10/2006 (Agence Europe) - On 12 October, the European Commission adopted a regulation allowing crisis distillation to use up some of the excess wine produced in Spain. Spanish producers will be permitted to distil up to 185,000 hectolitres (hl) of quality wine at the Community price with a top up of €3.00 per hl. The raw alcohol this produced will be used for industrial purposes (biofuel), so as not to disturb the alcohol for ingestion market. Crisis distillation measures have already been taken this year in Spain and in four other Member States - France, Italy, Greece and Portugal (see EUROPE 9237, 9218 and 9206) with a total volume of 6.6 million hl of wine. Agriculture Commissioner Mariann Fischer Boel regretted that once again the EU had to remove excess amounts of quality wine through crisis distillation. That was the reason why it was necessary to carry out rapid and far-reaching reform of the wine production market, she said. (lc)