Via the American Association of Wine Economists, the new European Union planting rights are available. As you may have guessed, winegrapes are being planted. This is yet another illustration of EU overregulation and interference with the market.
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The note below the table is important. Each country may expand plantings by one percent of the current total. This, of course, gives an advantage to countries with large areas planted since they will be allowed to plant more acreage than those with smaller planted areas.
And there seems to be a certain absence of logic in the allocations, most likely reflecting the political negotiations within the EU commmission. France was entitled to 8,101 hectares of new planting, asked for 11,744 and was gtranted only 5,755. Meanwhile ltaly received the rights to 6.685 hectares, 163 more than they were entitled to.
This decision is clearly political so I won’t bother worrying about the economics. But I will add that the U.S. also restricts new plantings. Our saving grace is that these decisions are usually made at the local government level by zoning and other land use regulations. For example, a developer who wants to build a new housing tract in the Livermore Valley must purchase an equal acreage and declare it to be used only for agriculture in perpetuity. The result, naturally, is houses and condominiums crammed together with developments separated by large parcels of land that are often not used for much of anything.
