Quando, qualche giorno fa ho letto sul blog VinoPigro di Lizzy che la Commissaria all’agricoltura dell’Unione Europea, Mariann Fisher Boel, aveva inaugurato un blog mi sono precipitato a leggere ed a lasciare un commento. Naturalmente non mi aspettavo un feedback, e anche il tono dei commenti in generale era piuttosto scettico: è solo PR, non li leggerà neanche, li farà fare ad una segretaria, ecc.

E invece pare di no. Questo è il mio commento che qualche giorno fa ho lasciato sul blog della Commissaria (riprende le mie solite idee sulle liberalizzazioni nle settore):

dear Marianne, I’m delighted that you started this blog, actually showing that a real contact with “us, the people” is important at all levels.
I’m a wine producer in Italy, in my fourties, with a long way to go in this business I hope. I’ve got a lot of passion for wine, but I’m very often upset by the poor level of competition and free market in this particular business, meanwhile huge sums of money have been given during the past year to control over production. I’m expecially thinking of distillation aids and similia, which helped the people to stay in business only to get this funds, while other motivated people couldn’t not enter the business because of the money needed to buy rights to plant vineyards. Everywere I look I see people grabbed to their priveleges, starting from those people who can control the market by arbitrarily choosing not to open their appellation of origin to newcomers, so defending their aquired rights.
Is wine in need of such a strong regulation? Why can’t the market regulate itself and allow entrepreneurs to choose if to risk or not in doing more or less wine, in planting more or less vineyards. From my point of view the current situation is helping those who are established by many years to keep their privileges, and keep a lot of young producers outside the arena, not making a good service for consumers. Shouldn’t the administration focus more strictly on the rules, investing a lot of more money in avoiding frodes to the consumers and help to promote our products in the outer markets, whilst staying out from the temptation of regulating the production and the prices?
The amount of bureaucracy needed to plant one Ha of vineyard is comparable to the same required to build a house. Is this helping us to compete? We are not, generally speaking, asking for less quality rules and transparent controls, but we, those who are trying to challenge the status quo, are only asking a more free market, where everyone can show his potential and everyone can have more opportunity. I know that you have been working on this matter, and I know that local resistence at individual Nation level (including Italy) is showing strong, but I would like to encourage you to undertake a serious and strong modification of the wine common market rules. Thabk you and congratulation for the blog!

Dopo qualche giorno, con mio stupore ed apprezzamento, questo è quello che Mariann riporta sul suo ultimo post sugli incontri con le controparti USA, contenente alcune risposte a commenti precedenti di alcuni lettori, tra cui me:

No need to w(h)ine

I’d like to thank Gianpaolo for his comments on the wine market.
I spent my Tuesday night in the company of MEPs, engaged in a very emotional debate on my reform proposals.
This brought home to me once again how deep people’s feelings run on this issue.
But it’s great to hear from a young producer who shares a lot of my concerns about the existing system.
We spend too much money disposing of unwanted wine and far too little helping to improve quality and promote European wines.
The system is too rigid and makes it much harder than it should be for young entrepreneurs to get into wine production and expand their businesses.
We’ve had an excellent debate on my proposals from last June and we are now working on the draft legislation, which will be unveiled in July.
I have been listening carefully and I think some opponents of reform will be positively surprised. I am also convinced that Gianpaolo will be very happy with what I put on the table.
I just hope that the ministers of agriculture will be equally bold, to give Gianpaolo and his peers the best possible prospects for a successful future.

Tre considerazioni mi vengono spontanee:

1) congratulazioni a Mariann, certamente impegnatissima, ma che ha il tempo e la voglia di dialogare con i cittadini di un Europa di 400 milioni di persone. Siano zittiti gli scettici e i cinici (merce abbondante alle nostre latitudini)

2) conoscete qualche esempio di politico italiano così sensibile?

3) sarebbe stato possibile tutto ciò senza il blog (o simili)?

Al di là di tutte le considerazioni di merito, mi sembra una bella cosa. Senza contare che, come ho scoperto personalmente, si inizia a fare blog per comunicare agli altri, ma poi ci si accorge che è altrettanto importante, se non addirittura più importante, “essere comunicati”.