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In future, wine producers should be able to react better to the effects of climate change and adapt their production more quickly. To this end, the EU published a few days ago a legal act revising Regulation 607/2009 on protected designations of origin and geographical indications. In the future, about 90 percent of the changes, such as the must weight, grape variety, maximum yield per hectare or geographical delimitation of the area would be decided as so-called standard changes at national level alone. The national authority would only have to notify the EU Commission, the approval procedure would no longer apply.
The President of the German Winegrowers' Association (DWV), Christian Schwörer, expressly welcomed the simplification of the procedure: "DWV as well as other national and European professional organisations had been actively involved in the reform process for years. We can be very satisfied with the result published today."
Up to now, all applications for changes in production conditions in the so-called specifications of German production areas required a two-stage approval process: In Germany by the Federal Agency for Agriculture and Food, then by the European Commission. This procedure has taken several years so far, explained DWV. Now the two-stage EU amendment procedure is limited to a few cases, such as the change of the name of a protected indication of origin or the change of the product category.
To ensure that changes to specifications can now actually be made more quickly, Schwörer demanded "that the German legislator now react quickly and provide for a lean national procedure with short deadlines".
(uka / Photo: German Wine Institute)