Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2001-05-15-Speech-2-159"
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"en.20010515.6.2-159"2
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"Mr President, like everyone here, I am concerned by alcohol abuse in young people and by the shift in culture, which dictates that young people, in some countries particularly, believe they have to get blind drunk at the weekend so as to be cool. I acknowledge, therefore, that the Commission’s initiative has a valid basis.
Unfortunately, our competent committees, which have collectively drawn up around 50 amendments, have again sinned in their overzealous approach. If their ideas are adopted, instead of combating unsavoury alcoholism, they will have succeeded in harming, amongst others, a whole industry, in other words, the wine-producing industry. We should make a distinction between the moderate, responsible drinking of alcoholic beverages – of wine in particular, which is part of our culture – and alcohol and drug abuse. We cannot combat alcoholism by restricting supply. For instance, would you like the production of wine, beer and spirits to be banned, and to what extent? The majority of our countries have a ban on the sale of alcohol to minors and this legislation should be strictly enforced. Why, though, would we want to ban the sale of alcoholic beverages at competitions and other events? The Evin law in France, which is also inconsistent with the single market, bans all advertising of alcoholic beverages at sporting events, but does not ban their sale.
We have also already held epic debates on the labelling of alcoholic beverages. We have not, until now, succeeded in reaching agreement on a directive. A recommendation on alcohol consumption in young people is certainly not the way to obstruct us, proposing to place warnings about the dangers to health on each wine bottle, for example, despite the fact that experience has shown such warnings to be totally ineffective in the United States. There is, moreover, a law on labelling wines, which actually makes it illegal to make the public aware of the benefits of drinking wine in moderation, whereas it has been scientifically proven that drinking a few glasses of wine a day is an excellent way to prevent cancer, vascular diseases and Alzheimer’s disease in particular.
I shall be voting against the amendments that propose measures which are totally unrelated to combating alcoholism in young people and which show utter disregard for the principle of subsidiarity."@en1
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