BREXIT SAVES US BILLIONS IN EU FEES AND MEMBERSHIP COSTS
Summary:
By leaving the EU, the UK is able to remove excessive regulation affecting consumer goods pricing, that in some cases even the EU admits are just pointless bureaucratic nonsense.
The removal of these regulations on the bottling of sparkling wines for example, will save consumers upwards of 5-10% off the average price of a bottle, with manufacturers saving upwards of 50p in production costs on every single bottle made.
Explanation:
In January 2023, as part of a wider effort to reduce the volume of superfluous EU regulations from the UK statute book, the UK Government announced it would remove the need for bottles of sparkling wine to have a foil sheath “completely covering the stopper and all or part of the neck” of the bottle – as had been replicated from Article 57(1)(a) of Commission Delegated Regulation (EU) 2019/33.
Though the foil sheath has been claimed in the past to be there from a security perspective – to ensure that the bottle had not been tampered with by people or rodents – the actual use in modern times is purely aesthetic. So to have regulations requiring the additional cost and wastage is no longer necessary. The EU Parliament itself stated in 2020 that “The foil does not have any other functional characteristics and is usually removed and thrown away immediately prior to consumption of the wine.”
The action of adding a foil sheath onto a bottle is estimated to add as much as 50p onto the retail price for the consumer – so as much as 10% of the retail price in the UK (though this of course varies with the price of the sparkling wine being purchased).
Reference: https://thesun.co.uk/money/21090555/booze-prices-slashed-brexit-eu-rules/
Reference: https://glassofbubbly.com/champagne-myths-separating-fact-from-fiction/