EUROPEAN COMMISSION PROPOSES WARNINGS ON WINE LABELS SIMILAR TO THOSE ALREADY ON CIGARETTE PACKAGES TO LIMIT ALCOHOL ABUSE

The European Commission has recently drawn up a document on strategies to combat alcohol abuse in the EU. The scope of this proposal (which comes from the Commissioner of Health and Consumer Protection, Markos Kyprianou, and which does not entail any directly communitary legislation) is not to prohibit the use of alcohol, but rather, to limit and combat its abuse because alcoholism remains a serious problem in Europe.

In Europe, one out of every four deaths among people between the ages of 15 and 29 is caused by alcohol: a total of 55,000 deaths per year due to automobile accident, overdose, suicide and homicide related to alcohol use.

For now there is no official confirmation that this initiative will pass, but it is easy to suppose that the use of dissuasive messages may soon appear on wine labels, as has already occurred with cigarette packages, and on liquor bottles in France and Finland with warnings like “drinking is unhealthy for pregnant women”.