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fullscreen The EU wants to find a common definition for what can be called cider. Archive image. Photo: Matthew Mead/AP/TT
The EU’s plans to standardize what is officially allowed to be called cider have caused concern among Nordic beverage producers.
Cider is a popular alcoholic drink throughout the EU, especially in France and Spain, but despite this, there is a lack of a formal definition of the drink. The alcohol content can vary from single digits to almost 13 percent and the percentage of fruit also differs.
The EU Commission now wants to introduce common marketing standards, and in the draft proposal presented in December, a minimum juice content of apple or pear of 50 percent is proposed.
That would do it for the industrial cider industry, which usually only uses 15 percent juice, writes the Euractiv news site.
At a council meeting on Monday, Wolfgang Burtscher, the Commission’s director-general for agriculture, warned that the proposal could hamper the growth of Nordic producers. Sweden exports 75 percent of its annual cider production – 100 million liters – which accounts for a third of all EU cider exports, and Denmark’s exports have also increased in recent years.
One way out would be a distinction between cider and “traditional cider” with a higher juice content.