The European wine policy through producer support estimates: an attempt at analysis

This paper is an attempt to provide an analysis of the European wine policy through the evolution of indicators of support producers dedicated using two of the most well know and used OECD’ indicators: the Producer Support Estimate (PSE) and Producer Single Commodity Transfer (PSCT). The works focus on the different between wine and others three agricultural PSCT from 1986 to 2012: common wheat, milk and rice, with the goal of comparing different agricultural PSCT and to highlight the high different support. PSCT calculations do not include much of the EU wine budgetary support (such as distillation measures) considered within the classification of payments based on non-commodity criteria. As a consequence, PSCT value of wine is lower than what one would expect. The reduction is also due to negotiations in the WTO – Uruguay Round of the GATT, which required a reduction in protection (tariff and non tariff barriers), aimed to eliminate all agricultural policies with a distortive effect on trade flows and export subsidies.