Bangemann sparks row over metric timetable

Date: 10/09/1998

By Peter Chapman

AMERICAN and EU firms are set to join forces against Industry Commissioner Martin Bangemann following warnings that they may have less time than they had hoped to adapt to a Union directive requiring them to label goods exclusively in metric units.

The European Commission had been expected to offer firms a ten-year respite from the directive, which was originally due to enter into force on 1 January 2000.

An informal 'agreement' to postpone implementation of the directive for a decade emerged from a meeting between the Commission, member states and industry groups last February.

But sources say Bangemann is now having second thoughts and is keen to reduce the delay to between three and seven years, with different time-lags for products depending on how prepared individual sectors are for the switch to metric-only labelling.

A spokesman for Bangemann admitted the Commission was reconsidering the delay, in part to meet likely demands from the European Parliament and those member states which support an early switch.

"If we just say ten years, then people will ask us why," he said. "They would say there has been a directive on this for years and they have known about it, so why should we offer them another ten years? Some member states, and we can guess who, will be in favour of ten years. But others will be asking why we need an extension."

Companies in sectors from electronics and car tyres to perfume are anxious for a lengthy delay before the introduction of the new rules, which will outlaw the common practice of using two sets of measurements, metric and imperial, on labels and other paperwork.

Such dual labelling saves firms the cost of operating separate production runs, with imperial and metric measurements, for goods sold both in the US and EU.

They say that the delay is necessary because imperial measurements are still widely used, partly because the US has made little progress in its attempts to switch to the metric scale and partly because the British imperial system is still popular in the UK and Ireland.

Representatives from the European employers' federation UNICE are meeting top Bangemann aides this week to plead for a full ten-year reprieve.

A UNICE official said the Commission needed to launch its proposals for a delay, of whatever length, quickly to give firms a chance to gear up their production lines.

"The directive should be implemented by January 2000, which is tomorrow. It will take more than a couple of months for some companies just to change their production lines over," he said.

He attacked the Commission's apparent lack of urgency in unveiling concrete proposals, insisting: "It is urgent for companies to know. We were very disappointed that there was no news on this for six months."

US government sources warned that Washington was also beginning to take an interest in the issue, which is likely to be a key talking point at November's Transatlantic Business Dialogue (TABD) meeting between US and EU business leaders.