In the EU, Breweries Face Stricter Regulations, Cultural Shifts

Things haven’t been easy for beer culture in North America, with the Brewers Association recently reporting another year of declines in both sales volumes and the number of U.S. craft breweries. Similar stories have come out of the Great White North, where Jason Foster’s On Beer calculated a 2.9 percent reduction in the number of breweries in Canada, that country’s second successive annual decline. Meanwhile, Mexican producers that have already suffered through years of drought are being hit by new U.S. tariffs.

Unfortunately, things don’t look much better in the EU, despite its rich brewing history and long tradition of regular beer consumption, according to a recent report from the Brewers of Europe, a Brussels-based trade group. While the number of breweries in the Old World is roughly flat — around 9,700 — sales volumes are continuing to fall, now coming in well below the pre-pandemic levels of 2019.

For Julia Leferman, the organization’s secretary general, it’s not just companies or jobs that are under threat. What’s at risk is an element of European culture.

“We like to say that beer is more than just a product,” Leferman says. “It has been part of European life for centuries. It’s more than just protecting the [beer] business. It’s an effort to protect livelihoods, communities, and the link between people.”

As the report shows, European brewers have much in common with their colleagues on this side of the Atlantic, including slowing economies, rising costs, and changing attitudes toward alcohol. That said, their situation has a character of its own. Declines are not evenly distributed, with some sectors and a few oddball countries — like Italy — showing modest increases. Another angle that seems specific to that side of the Atlantic: Brewers are facing potential new regulations at various levels, with the Brewers of Europe’s report making a polite request for “regulatory stability and support” from governments, though how that might work in practice remains to be seen.

Bigger Brewers, Bigger Problems

Marek Kamiński makes beer at his own brewery, Browar Kingpin, and has been helping friends at Browar Wąsowo, both of which are near Poznań, Poland. In his country, the big-picture beer numbers are definitely down.

“From an overall market situation, it’s decreasing,” Kamiński says. “We reached the peak in terms of volumes produced and sold in 2018.”

Though production and consumption have both decreased by about 20 percent in Poland since their peaks seven years ago, it’s not hitting everyone evenly.

“It’s fair to say that this is mostly the big guys, the big brewers — they are mostly losing,” Kamiński says. “They are losing volumes in traditional lager and they are losing volumes in strong lager.”

As those two traditionally important categories shrink, non-alcoholic beer has continued to grow, now making up about 10 percent of the country’s total beer market. And while the very biggest brands owned by internationals like Heineken, Carlsberg, and Asahi are losing market share and closing historic production facilities, things look different at the other end of the scale.

“The craft beer segment is quite visibly better off,” Kamiński says. “Before the pandemic, the craft brewing segment was developing really dynamically and fast. Now it has slowed down and is more or less stable.”

That echoes the situation in the Czech Republic, where the steady reduction in the world’s largest per-capita beer consumption is mostly a bane to industrial breweries, stripping sales from mass-market lagers. In response, the biggest Czech breweries are all working to increase their exports, while also pushing more non-alcoholic beer, radlers, and other drinks. The country’s small brewers seem to be hanging in there, despite rising costs in raw ingredients, labor, and utilities.

Hungary is experiencing a similar “oversaturation” at the top, says Nathan Ford, export sales manager at Horizont Brewing in Budapest. While year-on-year sales at many small producers, including Horizont, are flat or even up slightly, the largest makers are all down significantly. “It’s going to be a bit of a heartache for everyone and a hardship on the wallet for companies to survive,” Ford says.

A Variety of Challenges

Those hardships and heartaches take various forms. To start, there’s the economic angle, with most EU countries only slowly coming out of an extended period of lackluster growth. The bloc’s largest economy, Germany, has been stuck in the doldrums for a few years, and is still not expected to grow significantly in 2026. Last month, The New York Times reported on declining German beer sales, noting that more than 50 of the country’s roughly 1,500 breweries had closed within the past 12 months.

In addition to general economic woes, many Europeans are simply drinking differently nowadays. Compared to 2018, on-trade sales in pubs, cafés, and restaurants have fallen significantly in most countries, according to the Brewers of Europe, while a larger share of the total beer market is being consumed at home. That alone would be enough to reduce sales. At the same time, specialty bottle shops are disappearing in countries like Germany and Poland, which increases the pressure, especially on small breweries that don’t have distribution and sales networks of their own.

A third challenge is coming in the form of increased regulations, generally at the national level, often pushed by anti-alcohol movements. Poland is facing the prospect of strict new legislation that could limit or even eliminate all alcohol advertising, following a similar law on alcohol sales and advertising that went into effect this summer in Latvia.

“If that passes, we will not even be able to run our social media or talk to the public about our beers in any way,” Kamiński says.

Other national and EU-level regulations might make more sense, like increased requirements for environmentally friendly packaging and recycling. How those laws are implemented, however, could impact producers differently. In Poland, small brewers have applied for an exemption from a new law that requires deposits on cans and bottles, citing their market share of just 2 percent. When a similar law came into effect in Hungary, large brewers stocked up on deposit-free packaging in advance, Ford says, allowing them to keep prices low for an extended period, while small breweries were forced to pass those new costs on to customers immediately.

More draconian laws have been put on hold or delayed, like Ireland’s long-expected requirement for cigarette-style health labels on all alcoholic beverages, believed to be one of the strictest in the world, which has now been postponed until 2028. According to RTE, the Irish government attributed the need for the delay to “economic considerations,” citing new U.S. tariffs and other headwinds the country’s drinks industry is facing in 2025.

Good News to Come

While Europe’s large brewers enjoy economies of scale and greater cash reserves, the Old World’s many family breweries and other small producers can lean into greater adaptability, says Sam Fleet, production lead at Brussels Beer Project (BBP). Last year, the brewery decided to create a new non-alcoholic beer, Delta Zero, based on its best-selling Delta IPA, to back up its original NA product, Pico Bello. That took off.

“It’s already accounting for 10 percent of our sales,” Fleet says. “A brewery of our size, we can be quite quick.” Soon, the non-alcoholic category should make up more than 20 percent of BBP’s production.

In Budapest, Ford notes that Horizont has recently moved into botanical sodas, teas, and other new drinks. “We just recently released a line of cold brew beverages, which are all non-alcoholic,” he says. “What you’re seeing is that a lot of craft breweries are now turning into craft beverage manufacturers.”

Flexibility might be the trump card of small brewers, but there’s a lot of upside for European beer in general, Leferman says. As health advocates and neo-prohibitionists argue for greater regulations, producers can point to the moderate strength of beer, compared to wine and spirits, as well as the growing popularity of non-alcoholic versions. With a push for greater environmental regulations at both the EU level and in many individual countries, brewers can point to their industry’s obvious advantage when it comes to large-format, reusable packaging. Draft beer is the ultimate in sustainable beverage distribution, she says, in line with the EU’s ambitious goals for the climate.

“Our members have the most environmentally friendly package that there is, which is the keg, which has a lifespan of 25 years,” Leferman says. “It can be used multiple times. It has so many advantages.”

What European brewing needs most of all from governing bodies is not financial support so much as greater flexibility, she says, making sure that any new legislation doesn’t take a “one size fits all” approach, both for producers and member states. A 977-mile-long country like Sweden would probably need a different recycling and reuse program than an EU member with a more practical geography.

When considering legislation to benefit things like the environment and public health, European governments should bear in mind the importance of beer and brewing in the lands where it was invented. According to the report, brewing directly employs about 120,000 people in the EU, with untold thousands more working in related fields like hospitality, shipping, and farming.

“We are part of European history,” Leferman says. “That’s exactly what we are defending, also, on behalf of the brewers of Europe — to avoid stigmatizing a sector that is so rooted into European agriculture, culture, and Europe’s future as well.”

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