\u201cWe are not publicizing it too loudly because of the sensitivity for our partners,\u201d a senior EU official told POLITICO. The official was granted anonymity to speak freely, as were others quoted in this piece. \u201cYou asked the question, so I\u2019m answering \u2014 but we didn\u2019t want this in the headlines.\u201d<\/p>\n
Behind the scenes, EU negotiators describe a tense balancing act \u2014 securing commercial wins for European exporters while treading carefully around Indonesia\u2019s strict cultural and religious stance on alcohol.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cSome\u00a0delegates\u00a0on the other side\u00a0were like, \u2018I\u2019m risking my life doing this deal,\u2019\u201d said another EU official, describing how their counterparts asked to\u00a0avoid publicizing the alcohol-related provisions\u00a0and omit them completely in\u00a0any form of communication. <\/p>\n
A quiet uncorking<\/strong><\/p>\n The quotas are modest \u2014 1,985 tonnes for wine and 400 tonnes for spirits \u2014 and come with a duty of 5 percent. But in a country where alcohol imports have long been taboo, even this incremental market access marks a symbolic shift.<\/p>\n The deal was struck using tariff rate quotas (TRQs), which allow a fixed volume of goods to enter at lower tariffs, with higher rates of\u00a090 percent on wine and 150 percent on spirits kicking in beyond that threshold. <\/p>\n While the quotas themselves are small, they represent a long-sought entry point into Indonesia for European producers.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cWe are not publicizing it too loudly because of the sensitivity for our partners,\u201d a senior EU official…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":446491,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5174],"tags":[785,521,6851,2000,299,5187,8262,1216,6862,9917],"class_list":{"0":"post-446490","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-eu","8":"tag-alcohol","9":"tag-asia","10":"tag-bilateral-trade","11":"tag-eu","12":"tag-europe","13":"tag-european","14":"tag-indonesia","15":"tag-maros-sefcovic","16":"tag-trade-agreements","17":"tag-wine"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115255093749289530","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/446490","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=446490"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/446490\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/446491"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=446490"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=446490"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=446490"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}