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The 2009 EU wine reform decreed that planting rights would be phased out from 2015; the rights had prevented vineyard expansion without prior approval from ruling bodies. However European farming organisations including Copa Cogeca, the General Committee for Agricultural Cooperation in the European Union and several member states have called for the rules to be preserved.

States including France, Italy, Spain and Germany want to see planting rights maintained, whereas Britain had campaigned for the deregulation. The opposing states and Copa Cogeca have called on the European Commission to release a proposal for maintaining EU planting rights in the wine sector by the end of the year.

Whilst many European producers have expressed fears that an industrialisation of winemaking in the EU could affect the quality of EU wine and impact on its market share, the United Kingdom Vineyards Association (UKVA) has pointed out that such production controls do not exist anywhere else in the world. 

Copa Cogeca president Paolo Bruni outlined his group’s fears, “Liberalisation of planting rights would risk mutating towards a more industrialised wine-growing sector and result in serious imbalances. The whole system would come under threat and the high quality of EU wines would be at risk, causing the EU to lose serious market shares.”