Newsgroup: it.politica.internazionale
Titolo: La UE e l'Uva amara

Un interessante articolo sulla UE e la sua smania regolatrice parla
dell'uva e del vino friulani (con contorno di salsicce e polenta). ;-)
http://www.techcentralstation.com/090805A.html
Sour Grapes
By Constantin Gurdgiev 	 Published  	 09/08/2005
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	 TCS
A week ago, in Northern Italy, in a small town at the foothills of the
Dolomite Alps, I was a part of an illegal transaction: a glass of an
ancient wine that is illegal to produce for sale was in my hand.
Having survived the Gauls and Romans, the dark ages and the Longobardi,
the Venetians and the Hapsburgs, occupations, invasions, both World
Wars and endless economic crises, this wine, like many other regional
varieties, is being changed by the omnipotent "overseers" of Europe's
local cultures: Brussels' bureaucrats.
You may think the fate of a handful of wines is trivial in this age of
global commerce and economic development. You are wrong. The same
forces of bureaucratic fiat that devastate local traditions within the
EU are responsible for more than uprooting a few grapevines; they lie
at the core of economic and social stagnation that increasingly is
synonymous with the words European Union.
Need convincing? Check out just some of the recent headlines from
Brussels. "EU's finance ministers are being accused of paying lip
service to the Union's fiscal rules," screams one. "Unions and business
clash over controversial Brussels proposals," informs another.
"European Growth Model is at risk," shouts a third. "Britain demands
end to 'unfair' state procurement in Europe." And so on.
All this perpetual crisis rhetoric from Brussels conceals a simple
reality of the everyday European existence: absent any general
principle of governance and legitimacy, EU bureaucracy evolved from
being an overseer of a common economic area occupied by the independent
states into a predatory beast constantly in search of new regulatory
initiatives. The Left is decrying globalization as a root cause of the
homogenizing cultural and social values, yet the real blight
threatening the richness of European cultures is not the host of
multinational corporations - it's the subsidies and regulations passed
down by Brussels' grey suits, operating on the basis of interventionist
hunger for wrecking havoc on producers and consumers alike.
Yet the ills of the EU, as numerous as they may be, are multiplied many
times over by the national and local governments eager to appease
Euro-apparatchiks.
Recently, the Italian press reported a new trend in law enforcement
around the larger cities. Hungry for some action, the Italian police
are converging, in full force, on the new local craze: private dinner
parties. Allegedly, in response to the rising cost of living, young
"criminals" in Milan, Bologna and elsewhere in the Northern heartlands
are staging private dinner parties, inviting select few guests and
charging them the cost of a meal. According to Italian laws, charging
money for food cooked at home (and this must include the so-labeled
"homemade" pastas and salami) is as grave an offense as drunk driving.
The point of enforcement is upholding the EU Food Safety Directives and
other postulates, as well as a host of domestic business laws. It is
hard to imagine that in the country with a declining national income,
rising unemployment and public and personal debt, a minor
entrepreneurial venture, like hosting parties at a charge-for-cost can
be deemed a crime, but here we are.
The irony is that home cooking parties are nothing new in the land
where a combination of high taxes and absurd regulations mean that
local gourmands have to resort to self-service in order to enjoy the
best their cuisine and wines have to offer without re-mortgaging their
homes.
A sadder twist to this tale of "tax-evasion-Italian-style" is that in
some cases, private parties are the only way in bypassing the EU-wide
regulations on services and food products. Take for example one of the
oldest wine producing regions in Italy: Collio Orientale in Friuli.
Collio is a home to Europe's first officially produced and registered
wines, with labels dating back to the early 1400s, shipped to German,
French, Austrian and English courts and noble homes.
It is also home to several unique grape varieties, like picolit,
ribolla gialla and nera, pocalza, refosco, pignolo, fragola and
verduzzo, some of which were in production in the days of the Roman
Empire. Most of these grapes are specific to the area and many produce
wines with varied sugar and alcohol content, making them illegal to
sell. One ancient wine, called Scioppettino, traditionally fermented
after the bottling - thus the name is derived from the word shotgun -
giving it a slightly sparkling quality, had to be converted into a
still dry because continued fermentation did not allow for stability.
Another ancient grape fragolino, still grown in few vineyards for table
consumption, can not be used in wine production despite the local
demand. Admittedly, some of these regulations predate the EU, yet the
Brussels-promoted localization of agricultural production does nothing
to restore the vanishing traditions.
Instead of supporting smaller varieties with local demand, agricultural
subsidies to producers of commercial varieties of grapes together with
the standardization of "quality" requirements are pricing the ancient
grape types out of the market. With them, the small growers relying on
hand-collection, natural fertilizers and fermentation are forced to
sell their vineyards to larger, commercial producers that are capable
of availing themselves of more aid.
As the result, thanks to the benign oversight of local authorities,
Friulan wine lovers can only purchase these old crus in bulk, bottling
the wine themselves. Around harvest time, the growers, not allowed to
sell wine, set up small food stalls on their properties, called frasca,
where any visitor can buy some simple local food, such as salsice and
polenta, receiving wine "free of charge". The frascas popularity is so
strong, that a friend of mine christened his family minivan a
frasca-mobile. But do not look for them in the advertisement section of
the local newspapers - frascas are about as clandestine as private
dinner parties in Milan.
The fate of the oldest Friulan wines is more than a local story of the
new displacing the old - it is a lesson in the real nature of the
damaging subsidies and regulations that the EU is stamping out at a
breakneck speed.
On the one hand, the EU bureaucrats' zeal for controlling and
regulating production of goods and services erects barriers to the
development of new products. The so-called "protection of origin"
labels on food are just one of the examples how any entrepreneur
interested in introducing new varieties into the market will
immediately find herself subject of the EU regulations. Forget the fact
that, for years, consumers around the world knew the difference between
the French, the Lebanese and the Greek Feta cheese varieties. Thanks to
the EU, the former two were recently made illegal in order to secure
the markets for the third one. Now, go ahead and try improving on the
Greeks if you are a Dutch or a Belgian producer.
On the other hand, huge subsidies paid to the agricultural producers in
the EU mean that an Italian grocery store is more likely to carry vast
quantities of cheap and tasteless tomatoes from the hot houses of
Holland, than riper and better quality Southern Italian ones. The
logic: the Dutch grower gets a large production plus export subsidies -
the Italian one gets a production subsidy alone.
Pinch me if any of this has something to do with multinational
corporations. The real damage done to European producers of food and
wines is that of the distorting subsidies to the growers and exporters
- instead of preserving our heritage and strengthening our culture,
they promote entrenchment of vested interests.
The author is a Research Associate at Trinity College-Dublin and
Director of the Open Republic Institute (
www.openrepublic.org
)

 Dolomite Alps,
Straordinario davvero. Chissa' come han fatto a portare le Dolomiti in 
Friuli.
JP 

Ho scritto che parlava SOLO del vino friulano?
O che iniziava parlando del vino friulano?

 Friuli.
Ti consiglio di scrivere a quelli di 
www.bellunodolomiti.it
. Sono 
inspiegabilmente convinti che nella loro provincia ci siano le dolomiti.
Max

 inspiegabilmente convinti che nella loro provincia ci siano le dolomiti.
E io devo ripassare la geografia. :))
Max

 inspiegabilmente convinti che nella loro provincia ci siano le dolomiti.
Straordinario: il Friuli si è annesso la provincia di Belluno?

 
Siete tutti così presi dalle faccende internazionali che non vi rendete 
conto delle sanguinose guerre di occupazione che si svolgono sul nostro 
territorio.
(Torno ai miei libri di geografia, ché settimana prossima ho l'esame di 
riparazione.)
Max

 riparazione.)
LOL. :-)


Comunque, scherzi a parte, le dolomiti occupano anche una zona del 
Friuli, tra la provincia di Pordenone e in quella di Udine.
Max

 Friuli, tra la provincia di Pordenone e in quella di Udine.
Sono "altre" dolomiti. E comunque in Friuli hanno anche il Tocai ungherese. 
E si lamentano che i burocrati di bruxelles non li lasciano usare i loro 
marchi...
JP 

 marchi...
Hanno chiuso con la contraffozione di marchi <g>
Tb
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I CULOTASTIERATI:
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 O che iniziava parlando del vino friulano?
diciamo che il tuo articolo ha iniziao malissimo dimostrando un'ignoranza
geografica rara che ne inficia gran parte dei contenuti. Se piazzassimo
denver in Wyoming cosa direbbero i tuoi amici yankee che criticano tanto la
UE?
-- 
You_fuck_with_the_bull-You_gonna_get_the_horns

Ma i concetti dentro l'articolo erano giusti o sbagliati?
L'articolo non diceva che le Dolomiti sono nel Friuli, parlava di
Friuli, Dolomiti, vino, e della UE e della sua smania regolamentatrice.

 Ma i concetti dentro l'articolo erano giusti o sbagliati?
Quale articolo? 

painlord2k wrote:

io ho lavorato per anni nel mondo del vino e ti assicuro che in gran parte
almeno in Italia (anche della Francia probabilmente ma non ho esperienza
diretta) è solo politica sopra un prodotto molto standardizzato (per cui i
vari igt doc docg non valgono una mazza almeno per quanto mi riguarda). La
differenza è nella chimica non nell'uva.
-- 
You_fuck_with_the_bull-You_gonna_get_the_horns

 io ho lavorato per anni nel mondo del vino e ti assicuro che in gran parte
[SNIP]
Piccoli enobomber crescono.
Ora è chiaro da dove ti è venuta l'idea dell'enobomba Mk731.....
giac
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