Europe's wine barrels are overflowing

Description

On average, 75 million hectoliters of wine are produced annually in France, but only 55 million hectoliters can be sold. The surplus, consisting mainly of inexpensive wines from southern France, is distilled into industrial alcohol using state and European Community (EC) funds. For the affected winegrowers, this is an unsatisfactory solution, as the compensation doesn't even cover production costs. Since the 1970 European wine regulations guaranteed the free movement of wine within the EC, many southern French winegrowers have faced an existential threat. Thousands of families have already been forced to leave their land to seek work in the cities. Since the early 1970s, southern French winegrowers have regularly protested their perceived discrimination within the EC.
The example of the European wine crisis makes it clear that the same mechanisms that lead to underdevelopment in the Third World have similar consequences in some agricultural areas of Europe, and that autonomy movements gain momentum especially in regions whose economic development is sacrificed to national and European interests.