Over the past few months, the European Commission has been working on the simplification of the rules affecting the wine sector. However, so far only a limited part of the Commission draft proposal has been made public.
In this context, EU wine producers’ organisations expressed their concerns for the lack of transparency of the overall process as well as for some implications that may arise from the reform in particular in the field of GIs (for instance with respect to the rules concerning temporary labelling and reserved terms such as crémant, bottle-shaped, production method, farm names…).
In response to this situation, 17 EU Member States, including the main wine producers (Austria, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Luxembourg, Malta, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain), co-signed a document to emphasize, in the context of the simplification of the EU rules affecting the wine sector, the importance of keeping, for wines without GIs, the ban to mention any geographical reference smaller than their respective Member State. Those countries have also expressed support for the protection of traditional terms as well as for the indication of the place of exploitation, and for reserving some production methods exclusively to PDO and PGI.
For more information, see (in French): http://cnaoc.org/simplification-de-la-reglementation-vitivinicole-europeenne/
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