The European Wine Policies: Regulations and Strategies

The European Union (EU) is the world leading producer of wine and it accounts for 45% of world wine-growing areas, 65% of production, and 70% of exports in global terms ( https://ec.europa.eu/agriculture/wine_en ). The entire EU production is regulated under the framework of Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) and the single Common Market Organization (CMO). Nowadays, wine policy is one of the most articulate laws of the CAP and this is due to the complexity and heterogeneity of the policymakers, institutions and organizations involved, and the international scenario. The latest reform of the CAP was decided in 2013 that mostly renews the measures and approaches initiated during the 2008 wine reform which reorganized the way the EU wine market was managed, in order to ensure EU wine production matches demand, and redirect spending to make European wine more competitive. The aim of this chapter will be to examine the evolution of EU wine policies through three main policy orientations: “price and income support”; “quality of wine”; “competitiveness”. The chapater is organized as follows. Section 13.2 "The development of European Wine Policies: objectives" highlights the historical instruments implemented through three policy orientations). Section 13.3 "Historical expenditure and provisional distribution" analyzes the budget expenditures of each phase described (from 1970 to 2015). Section 13.4 "The EU system of Wine classification" analyzes the EU system of wine classification, the international debate, and the role of World Trade Organization (WTO) and the protection model of traditional wine terms and their origins.