Slovenia's representative at the meeting of EU agriculture ministers in Brussels on Wednesday voiced the country's opposition to changing the system of geographical indications, reduction of vineyards and a ban on the use of saccharose to enrich wine.
In a bid to simplify regulations on geographical indications of wine, the European Commission had proposed wines be classified into two groups: those with and those without a geographical indication. It also proposed a uniform registry of geographical indication.
According to Gvido Mravljak, a state secretary at the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Food, Slovenia believes that the proposed simplification is inadequate and is for keeping the national systems of geographical indications.
"If national regulations were replaced, this would additionally complicate designation as consumers and producers would have to get used to it, which would cause additional problems to Slovenia," Mravljak said.
Slovenia in particular disagrees with the proposal that the variety and the vintage is given for wines without geographical indication as it believes this would give an advantage to wines from the Third World. In this case the consumer would decide on buying a wine on the basis of wine-grape variety, rather than its origin.
According to Mravljak, EU agriculture ministers today agreed that the efforts to reduce excessive wine production should include an improvement of quality.
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