By Sindra Berndt
How the EU Let the Wine Industry Write Its Own Rules
The EU has recently adopted the controversial Wine Package which gives economic support and regulatory flexibility to the floundering and declining wine industry as people increasingly prioritise health and reduce, quit, or don’t start with alcohol consumption. Yet the most powerful word in this process was neither “wine” nor “trade”, but “urgency”. The European Commission used it to give preferential treatment to the narrow profit-maximising interest of the wine industry while violating EU standards for transparent, evidence-based policy-making in the public interest.
However, an ad hoc civil society coalition has revealed how the European Commission let the wine industry write its own rules. A coalition of 19 public health and civil society organisations has filed a formal complaint with the European Ombudsman. The complaint charges that the European Commission allowed wine industry lobbyists to shape EU wine policy in their own narrow interests while deliberately bypassing public consultation and a full impact assessment. Internal EU Commission documents reveal the process was driven by the special interests of the wine industry – not by evidence, public health considerations, or the broader public good. The case exposes how the EU Commission’s push to accelerate and simplify decision-making is eroding the democratic safeguards that protect people’s health from harmful products.
And the term “urgency” applied with limited scope played a key role.
The European Commission repeatedly used the term to bypass standard democratic safeguards: they deliberately decided not to carry out any public consultation, omitted any call for evidence, and ignored the need to conduct an impact assessment on the public health effects.
Urgency was clearly not about the rampant alcohol harms hurting European health systems, eroding economic productivity, and causing suffering to millions of Europeans. Urgency was only meant to give preferential treatment, a political gift, to a wine industry in crisis.”
Sindra Berndt
This matters far beyond Europe. If “urgency” can function as a political key for fast-tracking alcohol policy in the EU, the same logic can spread to governments around the world.
There are at least three reasons why the “urgency”-approach creates risks far beyond the European Union:
1. “Urgency” is difficult to define, which makes it politically useful
Terms such as “mortality”, “cost”, or “hospital admissions” can be measured and verified. “Urgency”, however, is flexible.
How urgent must a situation be before governments can bypass public scrutiny? Who decides when evidence gathering becomes optional?
In the case of the EU Wine Package, the urgency itself remained vague, while the political benefits of moving quickly were obvious for the wine industry. Urgency was clearly not about the rampant alcohol harms hurting European health systems, eroding economic productivity, and causing suffering to millions of Europeans. Urgency was only meant to give preferential treatment, a political gift, to a wine industry in crisis.
That ambiguity makes the term highly exportable. Governments across the world can invoke “urgency” whenever industries demand rapid political action. But the real urgency of addressing Europe’s alcohol burden is not moving the European Commission to action.
2. “Urgency” shifts political attention away from public health
Urgency does not only accelerate policymaking – it changes what policymakers focus on. Once a process is framed as urgent, political attention moves toward speed, economic pressure, and immediate industry concerns, while the harm people face, such as health consequences, social harms, and economic losses receive less attention in the discussion.
In the case of the EU Wine Package, “urgency” helped to frame the debate around the narrow and self-interested needs of the wine industry and the few EU Member States that promote the interests of Big Wine, rather than around cancer prevention, healthcare costs reductions, or economic productivity that are all affected by rampant alcohol harms in Europe.
This is what makes the concept so politically powerful. Urgency does not need to deny public health risks outright, it simply pushes them out of focus long enough for decisions to be made without fully addressing them.
In the case of the EU Wine Package, “urgency” helped to frame the debate around the narrow and self-interested needs of the wine industry and the few EU Member States that promote the interests of Big Wine, rather than around cancer prevention, healthcare costs reductions, or economic productivity that are all affected by rampant alcohol harms in Europe.”
Sindra Berndt
3. “Urgency” makes unequal influence easier to justify
The European Commission documents show extensive engagement with representatives of the wine industry before and during the EU Wine Package process. Public health organisations, meanwhile, were denied observer access to important discussions, due to the “urgency” of the matter.
“Urgency” is particularly effective in these situations because it creates a rationale for limiting participation: there is supposedly no time for broader consultation. But reduced participation rarely affects all actors equally. Large industries with existing access remain influential, while public health voices and the voices of the European people, the public good become easier to sideline and exclude.
The problem is that a single word starts functioning as a political instrument capable of weakening democratic safeguards themselves. It facilitates industry capture where the public good should be central.”
Sindra Berndt
This pattern can emerge in any political system where “urgency” becomes routine political language.
Sometimes urgent political action is necessary. But when “urgency” becomes a recurring justification for bypassing scrutiny, avoiding evidence gathering, and narrowing participation, the problem is no longer political speed.
The problem is that a single word starts functioning as a political instrument capable of weakening democratic safeguards themselves. It facilitates industry capture where the public good should be central. That is why policymakers, journalists, researchers, and civil society must begin treating claims of “urgency” not as self-evident truths, but as political claims that seek to hide political capture by industries and policy-making for special interests instead of the public good.
The case of the EU Wine Package shows that the interference of industries and the use of specific terms require the same scrutiny as the policies they are used to justify.
About Our Guest Expert
Sindra Berndt is Political Assistant at the EU office in Brussels of Movendi Sweden, a member organisation of Movendi International.
Movendi Sweden is the country’s people’s movement for alcohol prevention, promoting alcohol-free environments for children and youth, self-help and recovery groups for people with alcohol use problems, evidence-based alcohol policy solutions for a freer, fairer, and more democratic society.
You can follow Sindra’s work on LinkedIn.
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