Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2009-05-05-Speech-2-369"
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"en.20090505.26.2-369"2
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"Madam President, the world of rosé wine has a long, long history, but there is no definition of rosé wine within EU legislation or within the International Organisation of Vine and Wine (OIV). They all remain silent.
I heard the argument from those wine producers that ‘traditional rosé’ was a bit dusty and they consider rosé wine to be a modern way of producing wine. I clearly indicated that if other ideas came up, I would of course be prepared to listen to them, but I have not yet heard any suggestions on an alternative to rosé wine. As the Commissioner for agricultural products, I do care that we find the right solutions and give our wine producers a level playing field.
In certain regions, wine-makers have invested a lot of effort to develop a high-quality rosé wine based on a precise product specification, and have limited the wine-making practices for rosé wine to traditional methods. However, other protected designations of origin (PDOs) do not impose restrictions on making rosé wine. The product specification of Champagne allows the blending of red and white to produce rosé Champagne. At EU level, the ban on blending red and white wine is today limited to the production of table wine.
The discussion on wine-making practices, including on blending, started back in 2006 during the negotiations on the wine reform. With the reform, the Commission gained competence to authorise new oenological practices and shall base itself on the OIV’s recommendations.
Following wide-ranging discussions which took place last autumn with stakeholders and with all Member States, the Commission proposed the abolition of the ban on blending red and white wine. This was subject to an indicative vote in the Wine Regulatory Committee in January when a majority of Member States, including France, voted in favour.
The draft regulation has been notified to the World Trade Organisation under the procedure in the Agreement on Technical Barriers to Trade, and we have recently accepted further time for third countries to examine our proposal. Therefore, the regulation will be formally voted by the Wine Regulatory Committee later in June, most probably on 19 June, because further delay would prevent us from implementing the new oenological practices from 1 August this year, as foreseen by the Council Regulation.
You also asked for a specific impact assessment before the removal of the blending prohibition. In-depth impact assessments were carried out by the Commission’s services when drafting the wine reform and we do not therefore intend to restart the work undertaken in 2006 and 2007 to prepare the wine reform, nor to make an in-depth impact assessment of all different individual wine-making practices, so we base ourselves on the work that is taking place in the OIV.
Already now, economists in the wine sector stress that this reform will not weaken traditional rosés as these rosés with an
are not in competition with table wines. It is clear that the traditional rosé is a quality product that is highly appreciated by consumers and associated with the place of origin of this product.
Allowing the blending of table wine will lead to fair competition between European countries and third countries since we have allowed third countries – as already mentioned here today – to do this blending. I completely agree with Mrs Laperrouze. Why should we put our wine producers in a worse competitive situation than those that can sell wine within the European Union?
Some weeks ago, I had a meeting here in Strasbourg with rosé wine producers from Provence in France and we had a very open and frank discussion on the state of play. Of course I understand their attempt to try to safeguard the traditional rosé and that is the reason why the Commission has been looking at various solutions on the labelling issue. We actually proposed two different labelling options: ‘traditional rosé’ and ‘rosé by blending’. Member States can then decide whether they want to make either one or both of those labelling options compulsory for rosé wine produced in their territory. In this way, we provide the possibility for producers to get a more exact idea of what they are buying."@en1
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