Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask Her Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the impact of requiring VI-1 certificates for wine imported from non-EU countries.

Wine imports to the EU have been subject to the requirement to provide a VI1 certificate for many years. The basis for their introduction was to provide a level of assurance that the wine being imported met the standards required to be marketed in the EU. Over time the VI1 requirement has been relaxed in some cases to allow simplified forms of the certificate to be used, where for instance the exporting country and the EU have reached trade agreements covering the production of wine.

The Withdrawal Act 2018 retained the requirement for third country wines to be accompanied by a VI1 certificate as a means of maintaining that level of assurance. As VI1 provisions already exist for wine imports from non-EU countries, and these wines remain extremely competitive in our marketplace, we believe the new requirement to be appropriate and affordable.

As I and colleagues in Government have said on many occasions, leaving the EU gives us the ability to look critically at the laws we have inherited from the EU to ensure they remain fit for purpose. We have maintained simplified VI1 arrangements, where these existed, in the new trade deals we have concluded, and we will consider in due course whether there is a case to revisit the requirement for VI1 certification overall.