by Hervé Lalau and Joel B. Payne
European lawmakers have rejected a plan by the European Commission to uproot 400,000 unneeded hectares of vines, about twelve percent of the community s total vineyard area, in order to reduce the wine excedent. Instead, the Union will continue
to spend community monies to turn unwanted wine into industrial alcohol. Last year that policy cost taxpayers over 500 million Euros.
Katerina Batzeli, the Greek member of the European Parliament´s Socialist group, who led the debate and vote, told reporters that the practice threatens to undermine mountainous and remote regions . That may be in part true, but most of the surplus is produced in areas of France and Spain where politicians are merely unwilling to address the issue. With local consumption falling and no one else interested in paying more than a pittance for the wine, an enormous surplus has developed, drip fed by subsidies, which many analysts compare with the mountains of butter from years past. Not surprisingly, lawmakers in Strassburg voted 484 to 129 against the proposal by European Agriculture Commissioner Mariann Fischer Boel, who notes that the wine industry is out of balance with rising surpluses, falling prices and exports that fail to adapt to increased competition.
