ROME – The World Health Organization (WHO) – Europe Region has fully adopted its resolution which in fact undermines a sector, that of European wine, which in our country alone has 1.2 million employees and a commercial surplus with foreign countries of about 7 billion euros per year. According to Unione Italiana Vini (Uiv), the provisions yesterday in Tel Aviv in the WHO document “European framework for action on alcohol 2022-2025” differs from the provisions of the Global alcohol strategy approved last May by the WHO itself and the vote on the Cancer plan by the European Parliament who had stressed the need to focus action on the harmful use of alcohol.
The result that emerged from the vote, UIV underlines, is an ax for the world of wine and the beginning of a new wave of prohibition for the sector. The guidelines, fully accepted without any opposition from the delegations – including the Italian one – envisage a fight against the consumption of alcohol tout court as a priority of action, with a target of reduction of 10% per capita by 2025. Between the policies that the organization will now propose to the countries concerned, the increase in taxation, the ban on advertising / promotion / marketing in any form, the decrease in the availability of alcoholic beverages, the obligation of health warning on the label and a new approach the concertation of policies which would see the sector totally excluded from the debate.
The text is based on the concept of “no safe level” consumption, which was strongly contested only a few months ago during the vote on the Cancer plan of the European Parliament. According to Uiv, the objective of linear cutting also of wine consumption – without distinction between compulsive and moderate ones, as well as between the types of drinks – turns out to be decidedly far from the approach to the prevention and training policies promoted by our sector, as well as that from the moderate consumption patterns prevalent in Italy which Europe does not take into account. History – added Uiv – has taught us how prohibition is not the solution to defeat the scourge of alcoholism, but above all how wine is a symbol of responsible drinking, of the Mediterranean diet and certainly not the protagonist of the binge. For this reason the association appeals to politics, which in this case proved to be deaf and distracted, to try to protect one of the cornerstones of Made in Italy, but also of a social fabric of thousands of winegrowers, custodians of the territories and of a millenary culture an integral part of our country.
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