Germany protects its beer drinkers

Terrified by the possible reaction of the beer drinkers on its market, the Government of Germany announced that it would block the proposal of EU on increase in tax rates on alcohol of up to 31%.

The deputy minister of finance of Germany, Tomas Mirov, said that Berlin was not against taxes in general, but that it did not want to force additional taxes on German beer fans, since Germans would be faced with the increased excise taxes starting from January 2007.

Many other countries asked that their national drinks be excluded from the proposal. Among them are Spain and Portugal, which do not want that the price of cherry or port, be increased. Ministers will have to adopt the proposal unanimously, which means that the plan will fail if at least one country is against it.