CEEV and Wine Institute agree: keep wine out of trade disputes between the EU and the US

The European and American wine worlds have united their voices to ask Washington and Brussels to stay out of the tariff war between the EU and the US, which is focusing on the dispute over state aid to the two aircraft giants, Airbnus and Boeing. The battle has been going on for many years, and the World Trade Organization has also made rulings, first recognizing the right of the United States to retaliate against the European Union, and then giving the European Union the right to impose tariffs on US products. The result is a spiral that yesterday brought the European Commission to publish a list of US products subject to new duties (from which American wine was excluded). The CEEV - Comité Européen des Entrepris Vins (which also includes the Italian wine unions, Unione Italiana Vini and Federvini), and the Wine Institute followed up by appealing to the authorities of the European Union and the United States to take a step back in this dispute and rule for an immediate suspension of the additional fees that have been imposed starting in October 2019 to wines from France, Germany and Spain.
“The glass is half empty”, said Jean-Marie Barillère, president of CEEV. The European Union has, fortunately, decided to spare US wines from retaliatory tariffs, while, instead, European Union wines have been hit by additional tariffs for several months, causing irreparable damage to wineries, as well as to the entire supply chain. We are going to continue making requests to the EU and US authorities to preserve and strengthen the bilateral partnership on wine, eliminate all tariffs imposed on European wines and refrain from targeting wine in commercial disputes that have nothing to do with the wine world”.
The United States and the European Union are mutually the largest export markets for each other, whose trade reached the total value of 5.36 billion US dollars (4.53 billion euros) in 2019, creating employment and investments on both sides of the Atlantic. “Wine is a unique agricultural product, and we have strongly recommended, for many years, all governments to refrain from targeting wine in disputes involving other sectors. We recognize the important step that has been taken towards this goal, and we urge both governments to support the strength of the transatlantic wine trade by adhering to the “wine for wine” principle, commented Bobby Koch, president and CEO of the Wine Institute.