EU: No more pints of beer for you

An extraordinary row, involving major European and US industries, is blowing up over the European Commission's determination to make it illegal, in three years' time, for any products made in or imported into the EU to carry any reference to non-metric measures. Not only will this cost industries on both sides of the Atlantic billions of dollars and euros, but it is in direct breach of US federal law.

The Commission is so set on stamping out the hated non-metric system that, as of January 1, 2010, it is imposing a total ban on what it calls "supplementary indications" – ie any mention of inches, pounds or other non-metric units in advertising, labelling, catalogues, manuals and the like.

What will become illegal, under directive 80/181, is the current freedom of choice whereby both systems can be used to assist understanding; as, for instance, where a supermarket or market stall puts "lbs" as well as kilograms; or where car tyres are identified in a mix of inches and millimetres and their pressures can still be legally measured either in bars or in pounds per square inch. (It will hardly promote safety when most British drivers haven't a clue how much air to put in their tyres and it becomes illegal for the pump to indicate the "psi" equivalent.)

In other words, any US company wishing to sell to the EU will have to set up separate inventories and warehousing to ensure that its products carry no reference to non-metric units. Any European firm wishing to sell to the US will not be allowed to refer at all to the units its American customers understand. This in itself will be illegal under the US Fair Trade and Packaging Act, which permits use of metric units only so long as they are accompanied by a US non-metric "translation".

Say goodbye to a pint of beer.

What exactly is the point of not allowing both measurements to be shown? Is it just to take our identity and culture away?

Why exactly do they want to get into conflict with America when they can just give companies an option of what measurements they want to take?

The only people that are going to be hurt by this are the consumers. The companies will just pass on the costs to their customers and if people don’t know the equivalent measure of things they are just going to be confused. So what’s the point?

It’s a bad idea but for some reason the EU can’t tell that they are stupid but what can you expect from people who want to make us keep our car headlights on during the day?