Pint stays put in Britain
Tuesday, 11 Sep 2007 18:19
Saved: The perfect pint
The traditional pint is to stay put in Britain after a U-turn on imperial measures by the EU.
Brussels has left the decision on whether the UK goes metric to the British government, meaning that measures such as pounds and ounces are likely to remain in common use.
Ahead of today's decision, it had looked likely that using imperial measurements would become illegal by 2010.
Campaigners had long protested against such a change and their arguments included the unnecessary cost of changing every road sign in Britain from miles to kilometres.
But now, EU officials have said that Britain will be allowed "indefinite use of units like the pint of beer and milk, miles, yards, feet and inches on roads and weights in pounds and ounces".
"Our proposal is designed to honour the culture and traditions of Great Britain which are important to the European Commission," Günter Verheugen, EU commission vice-president responsible for enterprise and industry, said.
"People in the UK and indeed throughout the EU love the traditions that make Britain unique. There is no good reason why these imperial measures should not continue to be used and we've decided to enshrine this fact in EU law. We can all drink to that."
Responding to the EU's decision, science minister Ian Pearson said it had shown the commission had "listened to our views and recognised the strong arguments that we've made for maintaining dual metric and imperial labelling and the right for the UK to decide on the future use of pints and miles".
"We know how important this is to the British people and are grateful for the commission's support for this use to continue," he added.
"It clearly demonstrates the value of working together with the Commission to achieve our aims."