(content provided by EuroCommerce) The European Commission has asked the alcoholic drinks industry to create a self-regulatory system for providing nutritional information and ingredients on labels.
Drawbacks of national initiatives
The European Commission has presented a report on the mandatory labelling of ingredients and nutrition declaration for alcoholic drinks, asking the industry to come up with a harmonised self-regulatory regime by 2018 on how to provide information on ingredients and nutrition for all alcoholic drinks. European Health Commissioner Andriukaitis saw no reason why, as with other products, alcoholic drinks should not list their ingredients and display nutrition information.
The European Food Information Regulation already requires all foods, including alcoholic beverages, to do so, but hitherto drinks containing more than 1.2% alcohol per volume have been exempt. Some producers are already including this information voluntarily, and some European Member States have been imposing additional labelling requirements. European Commissioner Andriukaitis will assess what the drinks industry proposes in terms of a harmonised self-regulatory approach.
Should what the industry proposes be considered unsatisfactory, the EC would probably consider legislative options. The proliferation meanwhile of national approaches to labelling may have a disruptive effect on the EU Single Market.
