CEVI calls on the urgent need to extend the European Commission temporary crisis measures taken to address the market disturbance in the EU wine sector caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, while the adoption procedure for their extension seems to be frozen due, according to the European Commission, to the lack of agreement on the Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF) at European Council level.
Since the beginning of the current crisis, the wine sector has been largely affected and the European Commission adopted temporary delegated acts to partially address the market disturbance. On 6 November, Members States producing wine joined our call on the European Commission to ask for the prorogation of the temporary support measures at least until the end of 2021, as the pandemic is still ongoing and its effects won’t disappear in the coming months. In that respect, the Independent Winegrowers are very much concerned about the timing for implementation of the extended crisis measures for wine.
CEVI wishes to reiterate its request to the European Commission for the swift adoption of a legal instrument providing the wine sector with efficient support, as promised by Commissioner Wojciechowski. Member States still need effective tools to continue implementing key measures such as private storage and crisis distillation. We take this opportunity to stress as well the lack of a dedicated European budget that was particularly detrimental to crisis distillation, whose efficiency could have been raised to its full potential with an appropriate EU budget in the first place.
“Crisis measures are emergency procedures, they obviously need to be implemented promptly. Their availability for many winegrowers is vital. We can’t wait for a political consensus to be reached at European Council level to benefit from them. We are clearly being taken hostage for unobvious political reasons, as there is no direct link between the adoption of the MFF and our request. That’s a nonsense”, CEVI’s President Thomas Montagne declared.