Firstly, we would like to take this opportunity to wish you and your teams all the best for the New Year.
We have taken the liberty of informing you of our deep concern that we have the wine regions of Europe.
We would like to draw your attention to the tightening of the USTR on wines and spirits on 12 January. Since October 2019 we have been adding tariff surcharges to European viticulture, through their imposition on different wine products, and this, together with the measures taken to tackle the COVID-19 pandemic, is causing the wine sector to go through a very delicate situation, which, maintained over time, is becoming unsustainable for many operators in European wine-growing regions.
We are losing market share to other countries, due to factors whose origin is unrelated to our sector, losing the positioning that has cost us so many years and so much effort and without, for the time being, any aid to compensate for this damage and relieve viticulture.
We called on the European Commission to act urgently on three points:
- Firstly, to propose a moratorium for the next nine months to the new American administration.
- At the same time, to offer concrete compensatory aids to offset winegrowers for the damage caused by the American surtaxes since 19 October 2019.
- Finally, to find a solution to this trade war to extinguish this outbreak that is causing so much collateral damage.
We are counting on your commission to both support the penalized exporters and, above all, to mobilize your trade department to find a favourable outcome to this dispute as quickly as possible and we offer
the collaboration of the Assembly of European Wine Regions for those matters in which we can contribute.