French winegrowers protest cheap imports destroy crates at the Spanish border

Hundreds of French wine producers blocked the motorway at the Spanish border and unloaded lorries carrying Spanish cava juice, destroying the contents and pouring wine across the border in a protest for government support against cheap alcoholic beverages from abroad.

On Thursday morning, 300-400 wine growers from several regions in southern France gathered at the Spanish border to block lorries, unloading lorries full of red, white and sparkling wines and christening the road with their contents.

“Between foreign competition […], the regulations imposed on us and the historic drought that is threatening our harvest this year, we are asking the Minister of Agriculture to save us,” Pierre Hylari, president of the Young Farmers’ Association of the Pyrénées-Orientales, told France Bleu radio.

Imports of wine products, mainly from Spain and Morocco, flooded the French market in 2022 with more than 6.5 million hectolitres of wine at prices sometimes half that of local wines.

Among the imports, 65% comes from Spain, often in bulk, as entry-level wine. Spanish bottles sell for just under €1 a litre, compared with over €3 for those produced and sold in southern France.

As for their demands on the French government, Frédéric Rouanet, president of the Aude winegrowers’ union, told Euractiv that it should introduce a “Marshall Plan” for winegrowing to pull the sector out of the crisis.

“We’re asking for exemptions from charges, per-hectare aid, bank aid, irrigation possibilities, and anything else that can be done to pull us out of the doldrums”, the winegrower told Euractiv.

On the European Union front, the Bordeaux winegrowers’ union recently reiterated its call for the European Commission to grant aid for uprooting vines since it has the power to grant such aid for restructuring vineyards,

“This day was an introduction to the economic war we are going to wage,” said Rouanet, calling for another protest on 25 November.

(Hugo Struna | Euractiv.fr)