According to Regulation (EU) 2021/2117, which was published almost two years ago, from 8 December this year, wines and aromatised wine products must feature a list of ingredients and nutritional value of the contents on the back label. The legislation permitted producers to make the required information digitally accessible via the scanning of a QR code.
According to Comité Européen des Entreprises Vins (CEEV) president Mauricio González, who is also chairman of González Byass, “several hundred million labels have already been printed, many of them already on shelves” featuring a QR code with an ‘i’ symbol to indicate.
However, last week, just a fortnight before the labelling change was due to be implemented, the European Commission published guidelines which suggested that the QR code had to be indicated on the label with the term ‘ingredients’, and that the ‘i’ indication was insufficient. The European Commission had reportedly first floated the idea of the guideline change in a meeting on 27 September 2023.
This relatively last minute alteration has sparked outcry from the CEEV, a trade body representing the European Union’s wine industry.
“We cannot accept a new interpretation, published 14 days before the date of application, that will imply, on the one hand, the destruction of hundreds of millions of labels already printed and, on the other, our incapacity to print new labels in time to comply with the new regulation deadline. We therefore request the Commission to urgently modify the guidelines,” said González.
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