Bureaucratic red tape

by Daniele Cernilli 04/10/17
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Le zavorre burocratiche

Perhaps it because Minister Maurizio Martina is so involved with his party’s politics ahead of its congress, but the fact of the matter is that the minister for agricultural policies is making a large sector of the Italian wine world very unhappy. This began a few months ago with a freeze on the allocation of Common Market Organization (CMO) funds, used to finance promotional activities in non-European union countries, imposed because of a series of appeals were filed that in the end caused excessive and in large part incomprehensible delays. The result is that many promotional activities, like the organization of events and participation in trade fairs, especially in the United States and East Asia, which many producer were counting on and expecting financing, will not take place with all the consequences this will entail. Making matters even worse is that an attempt was made to unblock these funds for different projects but it was again met by predictable challenges. This has had heavy and negative effects on the whole sector at a time when exports are stalling and countries that are more efficient than Italy, from a bureaucratic point of view, are becoming more competitive. Another pressing issue is the reformation of estate registries, established by the new law on wine, which calls for the replacement of paper registries with an online IT system which on the one hand favors and simplifies controls and, on the other, has created an ocean of problems above all for small and medium-sized producers, to the extent that some have urged civil disobedience protests. The gap between the demands of bureaucracy and reality appears quite clear, especially in view of the fact that Italy still does not have an effective broadband network and producers in small country communities have problems have connecting to the internet. If you add to this the fact that many winemakers have little familiarity with information technology and will be forced to pay for assistance, with the economic consequences, the picture just gets worse. Perhaps it would have been better to have the new law provide for a transition period with a double option in order to eventually achieve its goal. However, foresight does not appear part of ministerial vision. The result has been that only 25% of producers, mostly the bigger ones that are more equipped from an administrative viewpoint, are in a position to meet the requisites of the new law. For me this does not represent a success and it is not opportune to keep issuing regulations from the top when they are not going to be understood by most of those who are called on to apply them. I realize that this is not a subject that many can get enthusiastic about and has little to do with the professional wine world. Nevertheless, I think it would be a good thing for even simple wine consumers to understand these issues which do not have a lot to do with the quality of a wine but involves bureaucratic red tape that even in this sector complicates the work and efforts of many people.





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