P.M. BRIEFING : Paris Stalls Reprisal Over Wine
France has for the moment dropped plans to retaliate against the United States over its ban on imports of some French wines, French officials said today.
They noted that Washington has relaxed the ban to allow entry of France’s fashionable fall wine, Beaujolais Nouveau, and is working to lift the ban entirely. “Things have calmed down,” a French official said. But he added that France could still apply sanctions if the dispute proves intractable.
The nine-month ban has blocked U.S. imports of wine containing the fungicide procymidone, which is used in almost all wine-making countries and found in about one in five French wines. It is outlawed in the United States.
France began weighing reprisals after the United States decided in September to prolong the ban in order to complete tests on procymidone, found to cause cancer in laboratory animals but believed safe when consumed in minute traces.
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