Local politicians in Italy have formed an alliance to rally against new Irish legislation that will put health warning labels on wine—making small producers pay for separately-labelled bottles for the Irish market.
The legislation is only Irish for the moment, but the EU Commission has permitted it—it must greenlight all national laws that may disrupt the Single Market. Member states fear this action may be a forerunner for similar EU-wide measures. As such, the Italians are now taking the fight to Europe.
The Italian delegation convened on Wednesday evening, March 15th, in the European Committee of the Regions, the EU’s assembly of local politicians. There, they called for a debate on the issue at the Committee’s next plenary session on May 24th, declaring, “we are ready to pursue, in every forum, new initiatives to change this approach at the European level.”
Mobilisation against the warning labels has transcended all partisanship, political and regional. Heading the group were President Marco Marsilio of Abruzzo, a founding member of Fratelli d’Italia; President Luca Zaia of Veneto, an independent regionalist; and President Eugenio Giani of Tuscany of the centre-left Democratic Party.
The Irish law seeks to make health warning labels mandatory for all alcoholic beverages, similar to those on tobacco products. Some interpret the move as an example of an overbearing ‘nanny-state’ in action.
President Giani said the regulation “is so absurd that … [I] will order that no wine with … the health label be sold in Tuscany, because it is an offence to human intelligence.” After all, “[w]ine has been part of the Mediterranean diet for thousands of years,” an Italian farming group told wine magazine Decanter in February.
For President Zaia, the issue runs deep, Il Giornale di Vicenza reports. He highlighted how the legislation is indifferent to the huge historical variety of alcoholic beverages, since it gives local organic wines the same health warning as imported factory-made vodka:
There is a lot at stake. An attack on identity is underway. If the philosophy of such labelling goes through, we will end up taking away the value and history of our familiar products.
The legislation may also be incompatible with EU regulation, as differing labels can fragment the single market for the companies operating in it. Even Irish officials said they were “surprised” when the EU Commission approved the legislation. Commentators from The Parliament Magazine said the Commission’s assent is creating a dangerous precedent that will ultimately hurt small beer and wine producers.
The situation is unsurprising. EU attempts to regulate the complex agricultural sector across the diverse European continent have inevitably produced chaos, as our commentator, Bridget Ryder has shown with the confused and contradictory results of the Farm to Fork strategy. But even in such circumstances, it is stirring to see politicians willing to storm Brussels to preserve the traditional consumer wares in their native localities.
