On 13 October 2020, the World Trade Organization (WTO) published its arbitration decision on the Boeing subsidy dispute. This ruling allows the European Union to request authorisation from the WTO’s Dispute Settlement Body (DSB) to take countermeasures with respect to the United States to the maximum total amount of 3,993,212,564 USD per year.
The 13 October decision echoes the permission the WTO granted the United States a year ago to raise tariffs on European products by 7.5 billion USD.
The 16-year battle is linked to the national subsidies received by the two airplane giants, Airbus and Boeing. The parties do not believe the estimated damages to both sides over the course of the trade war can be compensated for solely through measures concerning aircraft construction and trade. As such, sanctions have been authorised for other products. Wine has thus become a bargaining chip in a quarrel that it has seemingly little to do with.
The sanctions taken by the United States last year as part of the same dispute have already had a severe impact on the European wine sector. The 13 October decision opens up several avenues of negotiation to the two parties. One option is an escalation of new retaliatory measures. In actual fact, the United States is still a long way from reaching the 7.5 billion USD authorised last year, and the European Union now has the option to begin rolling out a plan for sanctions of up to nearly 4 billion USD. Another approach is that of dialogue and the release of products not directly related to the dispute from negotiations.
Although this fight between the two giants demonstrates the importance of wine for the economies involved, the OIV is calling for this opportunity to be seized and all necessary efforts made to re-establish free market conditions for wine.
The Director General of the OIV, Pau Roca, reiterated that “the wine sector has been hit hard by the COVID-19 crisis throughout the world and it has also been impacted by events linked to climate change”. He called for “every effort to be made at all levels to limit stressors and work towards facilitating recovery.”
To attend this press conference, journalists are kindly asked to send an email with their name and their professional contact details to press@oiv.int.
- Date: Tuesday 27 October 2020
- Time: 3pm CET
- Location: Zoom; YouTube livestreaming
Within the framework of OIV Agreements, Russia will be responsible for the financial costs of introducing this new language over the course of a three-year period. This should allow for translations of all OIV recommendations and fundamental texts to be made quickly available.
The plan will enable the Russian-speaking community to better understand and take on board the international standards and practices the Organisation has adopted to improve the conditions under which vine and wine products are produced and marketed.
The proposal is to be presented during a General Assembly at the end of November. Following its acceptance by Member States, Russian speakers will join the Italian, German, French, Spanish and English speakers who already benefit from the five official languages of the OIV. This will facilitate active participation and the exchange of expertise across a scientific network of countries with long viticultural traditions.
Speaking from the OIV’s headquarters in Paris, by web conference, Director General Pau Roca, presented on 27 October, the first estimates of 2020 world wine production.
- Lower than average production volume in the EU, where measures to reduce the harvest volume had a significant impact in Italy, France and Spain notwithstanding the overall favourable climatic conditions.
- First harvest forecasts in the US indicate volumes in line with 2019, but uncertainty caused by wildfires might lead to further revisions.
- Drop of South America’s wine production, especially in Argentina and Chile due to unfavourable weather conditions.
- South Africa finally back to “normality” after several years of drought.
- Australia records a low harvest due to bushfires while New Zealand shows a record harvest volume in 2020.
Replay
2020 Wine production first estimates
On 26 November 2020, and for the first time in digital format, the 18th OIV General Assembly concluded a year of virtual meetings with the adoption of 18 new resolutions, support for the Organisation’s digitalisation project and progress on the future integration of Russian as an official language.
An ambitious digitalisation project under way
The OIV Member States are unanimous on the importance of development and digital adaptation, particularly in the current context, marked by the Covid-19 pandemic.
The objectives of the project now in progress include creating a global observatory on digital transformation in the vitivinicultural sector, developing a new system for the collection and development of data on the sector, creating a new OIV website, and deploying a new collaborative intelligence platform to improve communication between the OIV Secretariat and Member States. This December, a call for tenders will be issued for the implementation of the project, the duration of which will be three years starting from January 2021.
Russian: the new official language of the OIV?
The OIV has already recently announced that negotiations for adopting Russian as one of the OIV's official languages are under way. During the General Assembly, Maxime Markovich, Director of the Department of International Cooperation within the Ministry for Agriculture of the Russian Federation, presented the advantages of opening the OIV up to a new language. The Member States concurred with the benefits of this integration and agreed on the points to work on over the coming months – the conditions that will allow Russian to become the 6th official language of the Organisation. This new measure will enable the Russian-speaking community to better understand and take on board the international standards and practices the OIV has adopted to improve the conditions under which vine and wine products are produced and marketed.
New OIV resolutions
Sustainable development is a priority for the Organisation’s Member States, which, through the new Resolution OIV-VITI 641-2020, have approved the OIV Guide for the implementation of principles of sustainable vitiviniculture. This guide complements and updates all OIV recommendations in the area of sustainability.
Several resolutions relating to new oenological practices are to be added to the International Code of Oenological Practices of the OIV, such as the OIV Guide to identify hazards, critical control points and their management in the wine industry (HACCP) (Resolution OIV-OENO 630-2020). This guide is intended to harmonise the analysis of hazards, and to suggest, by way of example, risk levels and critical control points that might be encountered during the steps of wine production.
Among the decisions on economy and law, the OIV has adopted the definition of white wine with maceration (Resolution OIV-ECO 647-2020): white wine derived from alcoholic fermentation of a must with prolonged contact with grape pomace, including skins, pulp, seeds and potentially stems. This definition makes it possible to distinguish, in particular, wines obtained by the ancient Georgian method of winemaking in traditional Qvevris, inscribed on the UNESCO Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2013.
Finally, the OIV has also adopted Guidelines for the evaluation of physical treatments of grapes and their derived products (Resolution OIV-SECSAN 664-2020).
See the complete summary of new resolutions
*The full texts of the resolutions adopted by the 18th OIV General Assembly will shortly be available here on the OIV website.