No excise hike before September
Needless to add that Ms Bätzing is not a person Germany’s brewers and publicans would call a friend. What irks them particularly is that her initiatives to curb alcohol abuse are clubbed together under the heading “alcohol prevention scheme”. This is no mistake. According to the Bavarian Brewers’ Association, Ms Bätzing is out to curtail alcohol consumption tout court rather than just alcohol abuse.
In an effort to reduce alcohol consumption, Ms Bätzing recommends lowering the legal BAC level to 0.3 mg/ml (currently the legal blood alcohol concentration level – BAC - is 0.5 mg/ml), a ban on alcohol advertising (EUR 500 million per year) and a partial ban on sports sponsoring, plus an excise hike on wine and beer on top of raising the legal age for buying alcohol to 18 years from currently 16 years.
The Bavarian Brewers’ Association, with some 600 breweries the largest federal alcohol body, has decided to resist all measures which reek of prohibition. They argue that the decline in beer consumption which Germany has witnessed for more than a decade underlines that there is no direct correlation between alcohol consumption and alcohol abuse.
Although you open yourself up to all kinds of accusations if you defend a moderate alcohol consumption policy for drivers, the Bavarian Brewers’ Association has nevertheless decided to support the current BAC legislation.
A reduction in BAC levels will not stop any drunkard from driving, they fear, but it will force many pubs and brewers in rural areas out of business. Already many small Bavarian brewers find it difficult to get their beers listed with the big national supermarket chains. Most of them rely on village pubs for the bulk of their sales. If the pubs go, so will the brewers.
