Champagne’s 4,855 sharecropping landowners get to keep their pensions

elebrations all round for the Champagne producers’ organisation SGV after France’s Social Security Funding Act was adopted by a small majority of 247 for and 234 against on Wednesday December 9 in the country’s lower house of parliament. The vote means that the 4,855 Champagne landowners who lease their land under a sharecropping arrangement will be allowed to combine the income from the rental and their pensions. It confirmed article 5b adopted by Senators on November 26 after Champagne’s elected representatives and the government reached a compromise: MPs allowed changes to article 722-1 of the Rural Code which recognise landlords as non-operational farmers and exempt them from contributions to the agricultural social security fund MSA. The changes involve “landlords whose sharecropping contracts provide, either explicitly or according to usages stemming from ancient law, for there to be no sharing of farming expenditure between the landlord and the tenant under the conditions stipulated in the last line of article L.417-3 of this code”.

“The adoption in compliance of the text confirms the essential clarification supported by Parliament: landowners who do not contribute to operating costs – in other words those who are unconditional landowners – are not heads of agricultural holdings”, explains the SGV in a press statement. This exempts the landlords from MSA contributions and “allows them to continue to combine their pension and revenue from the lease, thereby securing a specific status which is vital to the equilibrium of the Champagne industry”. One of the main benefits of the system – which accounts for 36% of Champagne’s area under vine – is that it enables vineyard holdings to be handed down smoothly over time from one generation to the next.