Regulatory principles to enhance coherence and to facilitate trade in wine

Secretary, FIVS, 18 rue d'Aguesseau, 75008 Paris, France

Abstract

The globalization of the wine market has generally outpaced regulatory development. As a result, wine has been introduced to markets with little historical product experience and has been subjected to standard food regulatory approaches that are not always appropriate given its unique characteristics. In addition, disparate regulatory limits and approaches to testing wine in different markets may result in inadvertent obstacles to trade and increased costs of doing business, but provide no counterbalancing benefits to consumers, producers or regulators. This paper presents a series of principles (already endorsed by FIVS) that, if recognized and implemented widely by governments, would have enormous consequences for the facilitation of global trade in wine. Many of these are already being applied among established trading partners, though they are generally not stated explicitly.