EU planting ban planned phase out by 2015

The 2009 EU wine reform decreed that planting rights, which prevent vineyard expansion without approval from ruling bodies, would be gradually phased out from 2015. But now two organisations which represent European farmers and growers, COPA-COGECA (the Committee of Professional Agricultural Organisations and the General Committee for Agricultural Cooperation in the European Union) are calling for these planting rights to be maintained.

Many fear that the freeing up of planting rights could lead to industralised wine-growing which in turn would put the quality of EU wines at risk causing the EU to lose serious market shares. Europe has already lost significant market share to new world wine producers.

English wine producers successfully campaigned against EU planting restrictions and Bob Lindo, of Camel Valley and former chair of the UKVA, said, ‘Balancing supply and demand is a universal wine problem, but controlling production within the EU ignores the fact that the rest of the world is unfettered by such controls.’

COPA-COGECA is calling on the EU Commission to release a proposal by the end of the year to maintain EU planting rights in the wine sector, and to overturn the decision to phase them out.