ZAGREB, February 21, 2019 – The Croatian government on Thursday forwarded to the parliament the final law on wine, which proposes reducing the tax burden on winemakers.
Agriculture Minister Tomislav Tolušić said the bill was formulated in cooperation with winemakers and wine growers.
“We have done our best to ease their market position, to make Croatia recognisable as a region that may not have many vineyards compared to other European regions but that has high quality wines and is becoming recognisable for them not only in Europe but around the world as well,” said Tolušić.
He said that winemakers had complained about parafiscal levies in wine production, with the state charging them around 2 million kuna annually for registration labels and about ten million for documents necessary to put wine on the market.
“The bill abolishes those parafiscal levies and what has been retained is the LOT number which is sufficient to follow wine from production to sale,” he said.
He added that the bill envisaged introducing wine supervisors to step up control of wine production from vineyard to wine cellar with the aim of making the situation on the market more orderly and fighting the grey economy.
The bill also introduces four wine-making regions – Slavonia and the Croatian Danube region, the Croatian Istria and Kvarner, Dalmatia, and the central and hilly Croatia.
The government today also adopted a set of legislative changes regulating the establishment of the State Inspectorate, which as of April 1 should take over the job of inspection currently done by several ministries.
More news on Croatian wines can be found in the Lifestyle section.
