From the threat of the Calesco-Calsecco nourishment: Italy defends its agri-food excellence between Brussels, duties, counterfeits and unfair competition. The future of Made in Italy in the world is at stake.
It is a matter of labels. Unfortunately, the etiquette has nothing to do with it, even if in general, and to Brussels in particular, respecting it would make us live in a more polite world and a better ability to understand. That instead the European “burosaur” tends to engage in an asphyxiating quantity of rules. Italy has long been fighting to have a recognition of origin on agri-food products, aware that in the EU is to support three ridge challenges: the first is on the internal front of the Union to prevent the very powerful multinationals of nutrition by using the regulations to evict our products from the tables and make us ultra-processed foods. In this regard, a battlefield is the nutrition, the famous traffic light label, far from averted. The second challenge is played on international markets, because the EU protection outside its borders is very weak and in times of growing duties the counterfeiting does not ask for better than having no recognition barriers. The third, which is also the most dangerous, is the temptation that President Ursula von der Leyen and his commission have repeatedly implemented: to use agri -food as an exchange commodity for favorable customs agreements. At stake there are almost 70 billion euros of exports that Italy invoice thanks to its “jewels in the pantry”. And 2025 he started rocket.
The “Donald Trump effect”, in fact, swelled the demand for the United States in the first three months. In the last quarter of December-February, we did a +4 percent worldwide, but above all the purchase of wine in America exploded. On a global level this Italian product accounts for +7.5 percent in value (at 578.6 million euros) and a plus 1.9 in quantity (153.5 million liters) with the sparkling wines reached 150.4 million euros, for an increase of 5.7 percent thanks to 35.1 million liters sold (+6.1 percent). In the USA, the question, in these three months, has grown by 19 percent! But from overseas now a worrying signal arrives. Calsecco – sparkling wine produced in the Napa Valley, California from the giant Rack & Riddle was on the market – which “precious” to write on the label “cultivated and produced in California according to the Venetian tradition”.
The challenge that American producers launch, Considering that the so -called sparkling market (over 39 percent of consumption) in the United States is concentrated between 13 and 18 dollars: they want to take advantage of the duties, if anything they will enter into force, to put prosecco out of market. Since the wine applies to our exports 8.1 billion euros (it is the single most important item in agri -food) and that the USAs buy almost for two billion, the question of label has started from the bottles. The minister for food sovereignty Francesco Lollobrigida has announced that, starting from the DOCG bottles, a small tricolor flag as a monogram will be affixed.
It is true that there are already ministerial bands, but the information is not immediate. He supports the Head of the Agricultural Dicastery: «This is only our intervention to better identify Italian production, but we must win the real challenge in Europe. We made steps forward with the QR code that should bring together all the nutritional information on the label, but now we have to block the alarmistic labels. It is true that with the recent “wine package” of Commissioner Christophe Hansen, approved in March, they took place forward. An aggression was brought to the wine from those who have an interest in developing other economies. And we will oppose ».
A matter that of the alarmistic labels that already distort, in spite of community regulations, the competition since Ursula von der Leyen It has allowed Ireland to write that wine seriously harms health. Which the new commissioner to the sector, the Hungarian Olivér Várhelyi, who wants to reopen the dossier of the document Be.ca (the anti -cancer) inspired by the guidelines of the WHO, with which the President of the EU Commission has a particular harmony, is not at all persuaded.
However, the problem of weak protection remains – such as the aforementioned Calsecco – on third markets. Hence the reiteration of the request for the label of origin. The president of Coldiretti Ettore Prandini claims who asked the Italians if the alarmistic labels on wine are classified: “The” no “are 80 percent and without this indication our productions are subject to a ruthless foreign competition. And then the customs code must be reformed: it is not possible that a product that undergoes even the packaging in the territory of the Union can be defined as European. We want more stringent checks and the abolition of this capestro standard. Together with reciprocity ». “I see” adds Prandini, “that we try to overcome the shock from duties by relaunching agreements such as Ceta and Mercosur (respectively with Canada and South America, ed), which is thought of agreements on India as already done with North Africa, which facilitate the penetration of agricultural products. The production and quality standards of these products cannot be different from ours ».
In Italy the government has equipped itself by wandering a bill that exacerbates the penalties for counterfeiters. Minister Lollobrigida inserts the crimes of agro-piracy, falsification of the DOP and IGP brands and deception to the consumer in the criminal code if we try to sell a product that is not Italian as Italian. And this does not only apply to foreign markets; Also in Italy there are scams on the origin. In the text there are an obligation to trace the ingredients for the products worked and we have also dealt with fishing for the first time.
Chinese pressure on agri -food borders is very strong. Suffice it to say that we import 40 kilograms of fish to person from Beijing – it is often “triangular” fish and made to come from other countries – almost one hundred million kilos of tomato concentrate and 15 percent of legumes. Because we import, globally, for almost 64 billion euros. And we also have the problem of the so-called Italian sounding- between false and imitated products, it is worth 120 billion- which waters the foreign successes on our three main outlet markets: Germany with 10.6 billion, the United States with 7.8 billion and France with 7.5 billion. At the same time, our first suppliers are Germany, France, Spain. The question of label therefore serves to say who we are, what we sell and prevent others from doing it for us. Even if in Brussels all this concerns relatively
