"Wine is a key sector, certainly for Mediterranean countries such as Italy, Spain, France, but also for the rest of the world. It is an interesting sector from the economic point of view of agri-food consumption, but above all structures around itself an entire industry that provides wealth, social and territorial strength to our rural communities, as confirmed in this inter-ministerial meeting".
For AGRICOLAE Luis Plana Puchades, Spanish Minister of Agriculture, on the sidelines of the Wine Ministerial Meeting organized by Masaf at the Ca' del Bosco winery with the involvement of 31 producing countries and the OIV.
"This whole area, this whole region, is very structured thanks to wine. In Spain we have an important presence, with up to 146 designations of origin and protected indications, which show the strength of a wine sector which, together with that of France and Italy, is one of the most important in Europe.
Well, we live and work in a European Union which is obviously a market economy, which I believe is the best system, of all imperfect systems, for adjusting costs and prices.
We introduced the law on the food chain in Spain on the basis of the 2009 directive and I myself, together with other ministers, including the Italian and French ones, pushed so that, in the next mandate, the European Commission went further, from the point of view , obviously, of the interests of the winemakers.
But I think the important thing is to maintain the balance, the balance between the winemaker, the winery, the distribution and the consumer, and this is where the key is: that everyone wins, because we are talking about a commercial activity, but at the same time time in which no one does it at the expense of others.
The issue of lower consumption and explantation is very delicate. There is no talk about it at the moment not even in Spain, and I think not even in Italy, but we have to be very sensitive, because we have to be very careful about what the citizen wants, what the consumers want.
You can make the best wine in the world and if you don't have a market, you have a problem. So I think this relationship between what we are doing and what citizens are asking for is absolutely fundamental.
And from another point of view I believe that wine culture is very important. You need to know, produce, but also know how to drink wine. It's not a question of quantity, it's a question of quality, of appreciation, of moderation in consumption, and I believe that there we can do much more together.
I always say that among the great wine-growing countries like Italy, like France, like Spain, we compete and cooperate. And I think it is very important that we also collaborate in defending that wine culture. I believe, and I have seen it in this same ministerial conference, that within the framework of the OIV we can do many things together, not only between us three countries, but with the other 50 countries of the OIV, and I am sincerely optimistic about the future of the wine sector ".