EU MEMBERS LOOK FOR WAYS TO REGAIN MARKET SHARE

France, Italy, Spain and Portugal have united to form a joint memorandum to influence EU wine rule negotiations. As the EU’s four largest wine producing nations that account for 80% of European wine, they argue that the EU needs to improve the quality and marketing of its wine to regain market share from the New World. The countries are in favor of maintaining crisis distillation – where surplus wine from a bumper crop is turned into fuel and industrial alcohol – as a main way to rid unwanted surpluses. Also, they hope to improve wine export marketing by doing such things as simplifying confusing EU wine labels and making them more attractive to consumers. The memorandum is likely to be presented to the European Commission and other agricultural ministers in the coming weeks, while Mariann Fischer Boel, the EU’s agriculture commissioner, is expected to announce her preliminary ideas about changes in the wine industry in June. Previous reforms of wine laws in 1999 did little to help wine surpluses and market share loss for EU nations. Although Europe accounts for almost 60% of international wine sales, decreasing local consumption and failing exports have hurt them as of late.