The Commissioner for Fundamental Rights Proposes to Amend the Act on Wine-growing Communes

In order to protect the interests of small‑scale grape and wine producers and purchasing agent, the Commissioner proposes to amend the Act on Wine‑growing Communes.

Several complaints have been lodged with the Commissioner for Fundamental Rights in which the complainants requested the review of the constitutionality of the Act on Wine‑growing Communes. The complainants took issue with the new regulation according to which the voting rights of grape and wine producers at the communes' general meeting shall be proportionate to the size of their lands instead of the earlier, "one member, one vote" system and the purchasing agencies shall not have voting rights at all.

In the meantime, the Parliament amended the Act but, as Ombudsman László Székely pointed out in his report, the adopted amendment failed again to provide voting rights to the purchasing agents. Purchasing agents play a very important role in the communes' lives: they help the producers to sell their grapes, must and wine and to deliver their produce to further processing. The contributions they pay is a major element in the communes' financing. The Act, however, specifies only their obligations and does not provide them the rights of other members of the communes. In order to remedy this anomaly, the Commissioner for Fundamental Rights has requested the Minister of Rural Development to initiate another amendment of the Act which would guarantee the purchasing agents voting rights identical to those of the grape and wine producers at the general meeting of the communes.

The Ombudsman has also pointed out that communes as public bodies are formed in order to promote common interests related to grape and wine producing activities. The Act on Wine‑growing Communes specifies several guarantees in order to protect the interests of small‑scale grape and wine producers. However, these provisions do not prevent a group of producers, together controlling the majority of votes, from having the general meeting adopt decisions in their own interest. The lower the attendance at the meeting, the bigger the influence of the large‑scale producers. Therefore, the Commissioner for Fundamental Rights proposes an amendment which would give further guarantees to small‑scale grape and wine producers enabling them to adequately influence the decisions adopted at the general meetings of the communes.