Government will drop red tape for all wine imports

VI-1 forms which were set to be expanded to all EU wines following Brexit, will now be dropped for all wine saving an estimated £130 million in red tape.

One of the sales pitches for Brexit was to cut onerous EU red tape. But the UK government has spent a year and a half telling wine importers it intends to increase the cost of administration by making all wine imported fill in VI-1 forms, not just non-EU countries. The increased administration costs were expected to amount to £70 million.

This week the government backtracked and agreed that instead of levelling EU access to the UK market by making all EU wine fill in the same VI-1 form as all other countries around the world, it would level access by scrapping all VI-1 forms.

The scrapping of all VI-1 forms is expected to save £130 million of administration. In a competitive market like wine, this should mean savings for wine drinkers.