EU threat to pints and miles lifted

Decades of wrangling between London and Brussels over switching to metric came to an end with the announcement that imperial measures can carry on indefinitely.

Since 1995, goods sold in Europe have had to display metric weights and measurements, but to appease a public outcry in the UK, imperial indications have also been allowed.

That concession to British tradition was due to expire in 2009, when imperial measures faced the final curtain - banished from packaging and market stalls.

Tuesday's reprieve follows months of Commission consultations with British industry, trade and consumer groups - an exercise which convinced Eurocrats that emotions are still running high over the imperial system and a move to metric-only in the UK would give eurosceptics more ammunition for the anti-EU campaign.

EU industry commissioner Gunter Verheugen has therefore now announced that pints of milk and beer, and miles - and the Troy ounce for weighing gold bullion - are all here to stay.

A European Commission spokeswoman said Brussels was responding to "serious confusion" amongst British consumers and traders and wanted to "put a full stop on this issue".

"This means that measurements such as pints and miles are in no way under threat from Brussels and never will be" she said.

One argument which helped persuade the Commission to keep imperial measures was British Government insistence that European industry needed to sell to US markets which would not take kindly to importing products only bearing metric weights and measures.

The British Weights and Measures Association has been fighting compulsory metric conversion for years, most publicly by supporting the so-called "metric martyrs" who lost a battle to trade only on pounds and ounces.