With Brexit, the inhabitants of the Channel are also abandoning the Mediterranean diet, with a 28% drop in imports of Italian pasta and decreasing quotas for other products, but with wines that resist better than all the retreat in consumption (-7% ). An analysis by Coldiretti also reveals strong drops in British purchases of extra virgin olive oil (-13%), cheeses (-9%) and tomato sauce Made in Italy (-16%). This is what emerges from Coldiretti’s analysis on the effects of the United Kingdom’s exit from the European Union; the study elaborates Istat data for the first five months of 2021.
It’s not that British consumers boycott us for nationalism, and London hasn’t even raised barriers or tariffs; more simply, the bureaucratic and administrative difficulties that arose with the exit from the EU weigh on Italian food exports to the United Kingdom; the major criticalities, observes Coldiretti, “concern customs procedures and the increase in transport costs due to delays and greater controls”.
These difficulties put at risk the 3.4 billion euros of our overseas agri-food exports. Before Brexit, the United Kingdom ranked fourth among Italy’s commercial partners for food and drink after Germany, France and the United States, now it will be necessary to see what will change. After wine, with Prosecco in the lead, in second place among the best-selling Italian agri-food products in Great Britain are tomato derivatives, followed by pasta, cheeses, cured meats, olive oil, Grana Padano and Parmigiano Reggiano.
Coldiretti underlines another concern, not linked only to Brexit: the difficulties in commercial relations between the United Kingdom and the European Union risk exacerbating a long-standing problem, favoring a substitute flow across the Channel of counterfeit foods and wines, which badly imitate the originals. ; the damage for Italy is double, because a market is lost and, moreover, the reputation of our products is ruined, since many foreign consumers are unaware and have a bad opinion of poor products that they believe to be Italian. Every year in the world the fake Made in Italy invoices a huge sum, about 100 billion euros.