Letter from Ministers Tajani and Lollobrigida to European Commissioner Breton on Irish legislation in the alcoholic beverages sector

Today, the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, Antonio Tajani, and the Minister of Agriculture and Food Sovereignty, Francesco Lollobrigida, have addressed a letter to the European Commissioner for the Internal Market, Thierry Breton, to raise the issue of the Irish regulations in the alcoholic beverages sector. If applied, said regulation would have distorting effects on the EU internal market and would risk negatively affecting one of the most important production sectors of the Italian economy. “The choice of Dublin negatively affects the freedom of trade and the free movement of goods within the Union,” reads the letter. “Italy supports an informative approach aimed at educating consumers to responsible behaviour and informed choices, but without the adoption of national measures of an arbitrary nature. We therefore request your intervention to safeguard the proper functioning of the internal market, in line with EU case law prohibiting quantitative restrictions.”