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Court rules Irish liquor can stick with traditional measurements
Chalk-up another one for those old imperial British measurements. And
drink a Baileys Irish Cream to it.
The European Union’s highest court ruled that the Irish liquor can
be marketed and sold on the EU market in its traditional measurements.
The ruling backed Britain’s Diageo PLC, the world’s largest
producer and distributor of alcoholic drinks and went against Germany’s
spirit’s industry association which wanted to ban certain small
bottles of Baileys Irish Cream from being sold there.
Diageo Germany spokesman Marco Faes said: “We are pleased about
the outcome of the decision. It proves that our arguments about the free
movement of goods within the European Union was correct."
Baileys was sold in Germany in units of half a gill, or 7.1 centiliters,
while continental measurements call for five or 10 centiliters.
The court said that barring the sale would impede the free movement of
goods in the 27-nation EU and argued that the consumer was sufficiently
protected if the correct volume was clearly labelled on the bottle.
Last month, the European Commission decided it would allow Britain and
Ireland to keep some of their old imperial measurements so pubs could
still serve real pints and road signs would show miles instead of kilometers.
European Union rules drafted in 1999 aimed to phase out the imperial measures
by 2009 but the EU's executive body backtracked in the face of public
opposition.
Britain and Ireland, like almost all countries around the world, officially
use the metric system, but also often use imperial measures in tandem. |
