Examination of Witnesses (Questions 200
- 209)
MONDAY 7 MARCH 2007
MR JOSÉ RAMÓN FERNANDEZ
Q200 Lord Plumb:
There is one further thing as far as the use of must is concerned.
The Commission, I gather, have already suggested the removal of
aid for grape must. That is, of course, just in the south of the
Community, and the prohibition of chaptalisation in the north.
Do you have a view on this? Or is it something that is of concern?
Mr Fernandez: This is always one of the classic,
traditional, hot issues when approaching a reform because there
is an historic background about why there is today public intervention
in funding the use of grape must for enrichment and at the same
time there is authorisation for using sugar in enriching wine.
Our position, and it is a position which is shared by the whole
European Union wine industry, which is a delicate and sensitive
issue, is that enrichment is an oenological practice. It is perfectly
possible to enrich the wine and it should continue to be possible,
but we stress the idea that enrichment is an oenological practice
and should not in any case be a market intervention mechanism
by subsidising anything. The priority for enrichment should be
to give priority to wine products for enrichment because that
once again preserves as much as possible the integrity of the
whole product. But of course there is a tradition, or a need because
of climatic conditions, for enrichment in certain parts of the
European Union. We think that this should be revisited. The approach
we want to promote is to have a clear indication of the areas
where this can be done in order to avoid abuses in terms of enrichment
in any case. Finally, what we say on that is, forget about giving
money to use this method of enrichment, but at the same time enrichment
with sugar should be limited to what is strictly necessary because
of climatic conditions and so on. For that you have to open the
debate with Member States about what could be the areas where
you could do that with reviewed limits.
Q201 Baroness Jones of Whitchurch:
Given how restrictive the rules currently are, as we have been
discussing, have you got any evidence, particularly at the lower
end of the market, of people breaking the rules, of inaccurate
labelling, of table wines being wrongly designated so that people
can sell them on the market? How widespread is that? Secondly,
how easy is it to get the new EU countries to embrace these rather
arcane rules? Presumably they are very resistant to them.
Mr Fernandez: Do you want me to answer about
all these aspects or a particular one?
Q202 Baroness Jones of Whitchurch:
Let us go with the labelling.
Mr Fernandez: In terms of the temptation to
breach the rules because they are complex, as I tried to explain
before, for labelling you have the possibility in practice to
go under a Geographical Indication scheme without a lot of difficulty,
so you have the choice. Either you take your table wine and you
stick to what is not possible to communicate on the table wine
or you go into the scheme of Geographical Indications. There is
also in the wine producing countries quite strong control already
by the bodies which manage the Geographical Indications or the
food authorities that control the accuracy of claims that are
made on the label. We do not have a summary or photograph of what
could be the situation in terms of breaches of the rules on labelling
at a European level, but here in our environment in Brussels we
do not get the impression that that is a huge issue for driving
reform on that point of labelling. Considering the third countries,
of course, the situation is that we are already confronting this
competition, not only outside the European Union but also inside.
We have bilateral agreements for the wine trade with some of those
countries and they can market their wines with the brand and the
name of the country with the varietal without any problem.
Q203 Baroness Jones of Whitchurch:
I was thinking more of Romania, Bulgaria, those countries which
have presumably had their traditional way of labelling that does
not necessarily fit with the new EU rules. Are they making those
adjustments?
Mr Fernandez: In principle, by acceding to the
European Union, talking about Romania and Bulgaria, they are obliged
to stick to the acquis, so they should not be able to label
today varietals on their table wine, and they have also their
Geographical Indications which are recognised and incorporated
within the European Union regulations, so they are not today treated
in a different way from any existing Member State.
Q204 Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer:
On your website you talk about the environment and I wonder what
that word encompasses, whether it is landscape and biodiversity.
I wonder also if you could expand a bit on whether you think that
the reform of the regime is likely to have benefits to the environment
or disbenefits, and particularly perhaps, thinking about some
of the issues that are being highlighted with climate change,
how weighty are environmental issues in considering reform?
Mr Fernandez: First of all, traditionally as
industry and trade we have been focusing, when talking about environmental
issues, mainly on environmental issues concerning industry and
trade—for example, packaging waste, packaging management,
all these kinds of things. I think that in the proposal from the
European Commission there is increasing attention given to the
environmental aspects in terms of putting the wine sector also
in the mainstream of cross-compliance with environmental conditions
for the whole agricultural production of the European Union.
Q205 Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer:
Did most of your members agree with that approach, that cross-compliance
should be included?
Mr Fernandez: From our point of view the support
in terms of having the production of wine respecting or promoting
environmental standards in wine production and wine growing is
very important, so we do not oppose this approach at all. There
is a new evolution in perspective, which is the organic production
of wines. Until now organic grapes from which we can produce wines
which are regulated by the European Union have been part of the
whole package of organic agriculture, but now there is a proposal
to go ahead and include also wine making in an organic way in
the scope of this regulation. That is something we have to look
at very carefully because, as I tried to explain before, the whole
set of wine making rules that we have in the European Union today
is intended to preserve the natural and minimum human intervention
approach in wine making. So if we create a regulatory category
of organic wine which is different from conventional wine, the
difference to the consumer should be significant enough to justify
this difference. We will look very carefully at that and try to
participate in the debate about the definition of the terms of
reference for organic wines. I think that is going to be one of
the important topics in terms of environmental perspective in
the future for the wine sector.
Q206 Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer:
France already has quite a strong market in wine labelled as biologique,
so where are the standards for that? There are standards for that
drawn up, so how would a new organic wine sector vary from that?
Mr Fernandez: I think this is the starting point
of confusion about organic wines. There is already regulation.
It is about wine coming from organic grapes. In the production
of wine you have the production of grapes and after that you press
the grapes and you have the fermentation, wine making et cetera.
You can grow organic grapes perfectly well today and, if you have
a claim and you want to say that it is "organic wine",
it is about wine made from organic grapes. However, of course,
in the public arena there are more and more developments every
year in the organic wine field and the challenge we have today
is that there should be some rules for organic wines and wine
making.
Q207 Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer:
In the process as opposed to just the grapes?
Mr Fernandez: Exactly, and that is something
which is on the agenda now of the European Commission to define,
so we say that work has already been launched and for the next
year there should be some draft terms of reference on what could
be considered an organic wine. That is where we say that we should
take a careful look at what is going to be defined as a term of
reference for organic wine, because already the rules that we
have for wine making are intended to preserve as much as possible
the non-intensive human intervention approach in the wine making.
Q208 Lord Bach:
You very kindly sent us a list of your members. It is obvious
that they include members from south Europe, north Europe and
central Europe. It must be difficult sometimes to form policy
on an issue like wine reform when interests clearly can be very
different. I do not know if you want to share with us—maybe
you do not—how you manage to come to the kinds of articulate
conclusions which you have given us today, and in particular,
with regard to the whole issue of rural development and rural
development programmes in terms of EU cash, when there must be
differences between what your members think, depending from where
they come, how you manage to form a view about that and what your
view is on it.
Mr Fernandez: As a conclusion, I would say that
our job consists of trying to bring all these parts together and
define where there are shared beliefs and common principles that
we can defend. That is what I tried to explain at the beginning.
The process is a kind of question: do you want to be more competitive,
do you think that we should be more competitive, yes or no? If
you say yes, we should agree on what are the elements in the currency
that exists and are not allowing our sector to be that competitive.
On that basis we have built up the position I tried to explain
to you. There are some fundamentals, of course there are. If you
go into the details about what is going to be the distribution
of support from the European Union for the different national
sectors, we have not yet gone into this detail because, of course,
it will be very complicated for our organisation to arbitrate
and decide on that. But there are some fundamentals on which we
all agree, which is that we need to promote and integrate the
promotion of our wine consumption in a moderate and responsible
way in the wine policy. We need to have an ambitious external
trade policy. We need to review all the market intervention measures
in order to eliminate what is preventing adaptation to the market,
and also there is room for manoeuvre in terms of simplifying the
rules that we have today. On this basis we have created the whole
position that we have tried to explain in this session. Concerning
rural development, there is this strong proposal from the European
Commission to cease production and grub up in order to stop production
of wine which is not finding a market. We think that the European
wine sector should also take profit from the fact that there is
a rural development tool which is not necessarily fully used in
an appropriate way by the wine sector, so we think this is an
opportunity for accompanying the adaptation of the wine sector
to a more market oriented approach, but it is mainly for Member
States and our national members to handle with their priorities
how they want to see this reflected in the Common Market Organisation
reform.
Q209 Lord Bach:
Pillar 2 spending attracts your organisation or does not? Or do
you think it is just a matter for individual countries?
Mr Fernandez: We promote and defend the idea
that we want to preserve a specific wine regime in the first pillar,
because it is coherent with having a comprehensive and consistent
wine policy. But we recognise that preserving this principle of
having the fundamental of the regime in the first pillar means
there is huge potential for complementary support and help from
the second pillar which has not been fully used by the European
wine sector to the extent that it could be. One of the fundamentals
in our position is that we want to preserve for the time being
this specific approach on the first pillar tool for the reform
of the Common Market Organisation.
Chairman: Mr Fernandez, that was absolutely
fascinating and very valuable to us. Thank you very much for your
time and the clear way in which you expressed your thoughts and
opinions.
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