The effect of the rules, paradoxically, will be to disadvantage that "higher level of information" that the Regulation itself would like to achieve. Moreover, having a fundamentally dis-educative value, as we have seen, the Regulation could even be in conflict with Article 169 of the TFEU, according to which "In order to promote the interests of consumers and to ensure a high level of consumer protection, the Union shall contribute to protecting the health, safety and economic interests of consumers, as well as to promoting their right to information, education and to organise themselves in order to safeguard their interests". In fact, in this case, the apparent greater quantity of information contrasts sharply with its quality, thus contributing to consumer confusion, especially, as we have seen, among those with a lower socio-cultural level. In other words: while there is no doubt that the terms 'information' and 'education' must be read together and constitute a right under Article 169 of the Treaty, they must be able to complement each other30 . If information, from a qualitative point of view, conflicts with the objective of education, it in turn conflicts with the fundamental regulations of the EU. A further risk is therefore to discourage the consumption of quality wine, redirecting the lower end of the market towards cheap products or other beverages (such as beer, which is less calorific than wine because it has less alcohol) and emphasizing the notion of wine as a 'luxury' product31 . Hence my highly critical opinion of the new legislation, which seems to me, mutatis mutandis, to fit in with the general trend towards political correctness that characterizes some recent interventions of the legislator, not only European. 30 E. B. GOLDSMITH, S. PISCOPO, Advances in consumer education: European initiatives, in International Journal of Consumer Studies, 2014, 38.1: 52-61. 31 E. PABST, G. SZOLNOKI, S.M. LOOSE, How will mandatory nutrition and ingredient labelling affect the wine industry? A quantitative study of producers' perspectives, in Wine Economics and Policy, 2019, 8.2: 103-113, provide evidence from a series of interviews with German producers, from which it emerges that they say they are not concerned by the mandatory inclusion of nutritional information, as wine is seen as a luxury product, whose consumer public tends to be indifferent to such information. However, it should be noted that the German wine market is profoundly different from that of countries where wine is the most traditional alcoholic beverage, such as France, Spain, Portugal, Italy etc.
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MTE4NzM5Nw==