Make your vote count
It may have crept under your radar, but on 4 June we will be invited to vote in the European elections. The turn-out will be low, but I would encourage all readers to exercise their democratic rights in the interests of pubs and breweries.
In its election manifesto, the European Beer Consumers' Union (Ebcu) makes some telling points about the problems facing brewers in the Euro zone. The manifesto calls for radical change and that change would have an impact on the price of beer at
the bar. You don't need to be told that it's the sky-rocketing price of beer that is one of the major causes of pub closures.
Beer would be cheaper and breweries could flourish more easily if they enjoyed the advantages given to the European wine industry. The French and Italian wine makers have been vociferous claimants for their industry since the early days of the Common Market, forerunner of the European Union.
As a result, wine is treated as an agricultural activity while beer is dubbed an urban industry. Wine makers get an annual eye-watering subsidy of e1.5bn (£1.35bn) that helps them make healthy profits and keeps down the price of wine to the consumer.
Brewers have both hands tied behind their backs. It's nonsense to claim that brewing is an industry when the raw ingredients — grain and hops — are by their very nature grown in the countryside, often not a million miles from vineyards. It's also a complete barrel-load of Horlicks to think that wine is a product steeped in folk-lore and made by cheery peasants with straw in their ears.
A few years ago I visited friends in the medieval walled town of Jesi, in Italy. They took me up into the hills above the town where the white wine Verdicchio is made. Inside a large shed we discovered one farmer and his wife inside a large wooden vat, treading the grapes. Verdicchio doesn't enjoy large sales in Britain — it's probably that subtle aroma of cheesy feet that puts drinkers off.
But it's an urban myth to think that all wine is still made in that time-honoured manner. A lot of wine, especially at the cheap end of the market, is made in steel vessels in towns. Carbonated wine — not true Champagne — is an urban product and is artificially fizzed up with carbon dioxide when it leaves metal tanks on large industrial estates.
Beer starts its life in the countryside. There aren't many barley fields or hops farms in Hackney, Moss Side or Glasgow's Gorbals.
Why shouldn't farmers and hop growers enjoy the same subsidies
as the wine makers? After all,
brewing is a generous contributor to the European purse.
According to Ebcu, which has 130,000 members in 13 countries within the European Union, brewing contributes e39bn (£35bn) in tax revenues to member states every year. A further e57.5bn (£51.7bn) goes to the total European economy.
Don't those sums suggest that brewing should get something back in the way of the aid that goes to wine makers?
There are 3,000 breweries within the EU. They produce 416 million hectolitres of beer a year and employ 750,000 people. On top of duty, brewing contributes massive amounts of money in terms of income tax and VAT. But all it gets from the Brussels bureaucracy is the cold shoulder, while increasing amounts of money are stuffed into the pockets of the wine makers.
When you consider the extent to which the European Union and its all-powerful commission interfere in our daily lives, it seems remarkable that Britain is allowed to charge such high levels of duty on beer. These levels are completely out of kilter with the rest of the EU.
We are the most heavily-taxed beer-drinking member of the union. I was in the Czech Republic last week and brewers there were bug-eyed with disbelief when I told them how much a pint of beer costs back home.
The Ebcu manifesto calls for a radical overhaul of the way in which beer is taxed within the EU. In particular, it wants a fairer level of VAT within the union to stop countries such as Britain witnessing a flood of cheap beer imports.
The manifesto also wants to see the rates of VAT cut on beer and food sold in bars and pubs. That would be of enormous benefit to hard-pressed licensees and would help them to fight back against the supermarkets. We are not apathetic about beer and pubs. So let's not be apathetic about voting on 4 June. You may be pro-EU, anti-EU or, like me, think it's like the famous curate's egg — good and bad in parts.
But please vote and then lobby your MEP to take the fight to Brussels and Strasbourg to get a better deal for brewers and licensees. Your future and my pleasure depend on it. And remember that sound Irish advice: vote early and vote often.
