European Parliament: Draft Report on Provision of Food Information to Consumers

The report of the Rapporteur, Dr Renate Sommer (EPP-Ed, DE), on the proposal for a regulation on the provision of food information to consumers is now available in English.

In her report, Dr Sommer proposes to exempt from the obligation to provide information on ingredients and nutritional values, alcoholic mixed beverages, liqueur wines, sparkling wines, aromatised wines and similar products obtained from fruits other than grapes and fruit beer.

Note: the Commission's proposal exempted wine (as defined in Council Regulation (EC) No 1493/1999), beer and spirits (as defined in Regulation (EC) No 110/2008).

The rapporteur considers that alcoholic beverages should not be covered by the regulation and that special rules are required. She believes that there are still a number of fundamental issues that need to be clarified; for example, in the case of spirits, a reference amount of 100 ml for nutrition indications would be highly problematic as many nutrients contained in food are absent from alcoholic beverages.

During the exchange of views on the labelling proposal that she had with the Parliament's Intergroup on Wine, Dr Sommer (EPP-ED DE) had already announced that she would probably favour the non-application of the labelling directive to aromatised wines but had noted that this could potentially endanger support for her report.

During the first exchange of views on the report (8 December) the rapporteur did not give any further explanations as to why she had thought it better to exclude all alcoholic beverages.

Only Willmott (PES, UK) who spoke for the PSE on behalf of the socialist shadow rapporteur, Ms Dorette Corbey (PES, NL), referred to alcoholic beverages in her intervention. She stated that alcohol labels should provide information about their energy content at the very least.

The timetable for discussions is as follows:

Deadline for Amendments – postponed till January 7

Discussion of Amendments in ENVI – January 21-22

Vote on Report in ENVI – February 10

Plenary – April 2009

Related articles:

EP Intergroup on Wine meets for exchange of views on the labelling proposal

Public Hearing on the proposal for a regulation on “food information to consumers

"EUROCARE's position on the Commission's proposal on labelling

European Parliament prepares report on Commission's proposal on labelling

Commission presents proposal on food labelling

More information:

COM(2008) 40 final. Proposal for a REGULATION OF THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT AND OF THE COUNCIL on the provision of food information to consumers

Information about the current status of the procesus in the European Parliament