EU Proposes Plan to Revamp Wine Industry

The European Union proposed a major overhaul of the continent’s cherished wine industry Thursday, a move meant to ensure the survival of vintners hit hard in recent years by growing competition from Chile, the United States, South Africa and other areas.

The revamp is “urgently needed” to win back consumers and to preserve centuries-old traditions and Europe’s reputation in the world’s largest and oldest wine-producing region and elsewhere, said EU Agriculture Commissioner Mariann Fischer Boel, who drafted the measures.

“Despite our history and the quality of so many EU wines, the sector faces severe problems,” Fischer Boel told reporters. “Consumption is down, and exports from the New World are making huge inroads into the market.”

She said billions of dollars in new aid would be made available to salvage the wine sector.

The EU plan foresees an end to restrictive and often confusing labeling rules for wines and winemaking practices to make it simpler for consumers to see what they are buying.

It calls for winemakers to put on their label the grapes used in the wine, a labeling practice used by non-European producers that has appealed to consumers.

The plan aims to restore the appeal of European wines and calls for the production of low-quality wines to be cut, by paying winemakers about $2.5 billion over the next five years to take 988,400 acres of vineyards out of production to reduce the glut of wine on the market.