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October 22, 2006
EU've Lost It Matey
Our glorious rulers in the European Commission have decided to cripple world trade.
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.
...
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".
I'm just about willing to accept that the State can insist upon the accuracy of weights and measures, don't agree that there should be compulsion to use one system over another and flatly reject the idea that one system should be banned. It's a nonsense, everyone around the world will either have to have two production lines and designs, as Booker says, or the entire world will have to move to metric only: just so that some fantasist can say that we now have a 'rational' system?
What will be the cost of this? The benefits? Shoot them, someone, please.
Update: interesting to note the Hansard record of the discussion of this directive. Parliament did not agree (it was under this that fruit and veg became illegal to sell by the pound) but it happened anyway. What a free and happy land.
October 22, 2006 in European Union | Permalink
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Comments
Booker has a history of getting these things entirely wrong so I wouldn't worry too much.
Posted by: Matthew | Oct 22, 2006 9:35:45 AM
Yeah, Booker's an idiot about EU stuff.
In any case, metrification isn't an EU initiative but of much longer history, beginning with the aftermath of the French revolution. It's only because the UK didn't get round to it (at least for trading) until well after WWII that it's been seized hysterically as yet another bent twig with which to beat the EU. Virtually every country in the world (US, Burma and Liberia excepted) uses metric measures for very sensible reasons, particularly for science, and although metric measurements aren't yet comprehensive they inevitably will become so eventually.
Haven't looked at the Directive but I bet if Booker says one thing the truth's exactly in reverse.
Posted by: Murdoch | Oct 22, 2006 10:39:18 AM
To summarise, the Commission decided in the 1970s that, eventually, it wants only metric measures to be used for labelling in the EU. It issues a directive to this effect.
It recognises, however, that the US -- and in particular the US's 'Fair Packaging and Labelling Act' -- presents a problem in implementing the directive and so, as the Hansard reference you provide puts it,
In 1976 and 1979, directives were introduced which included programmes for phasing out non-SI units. The proposal for the second of these, Directive 80/181/EEC, was debated by the House on 19 December 1979.[4] It authorised a transitional period to 31 December 1989, during which other units of measurement could continue to be used, alongside SIs, as "supplementary indications" of quantity. These included imperial units, customary in the UK and Ireland.
However, ten years later,
4.3 As the Commission comments in its EM on this amending Directive, the change to the SI system has taken a long time "due to the need to take account of the customary systems previously in use in the Union". In 1989, a Directive[5] amending Directive 80/181/EEC, extended the transitional period to 31 December 1999, during which supplementary indications of measurement could continue to accompany SIs.
And ten years after that, the US still ain't playing, so they decided, as the Hansard record puts it, to extend until 31 December 2009 the period during which units other than SIs are permitted to be used as supplementary indications.'
Based on past form, assuming the US still won't cooperate come 31 December 2009, what do we think will happen?
I would be unwilling to acquire a reputation as one who engages in rash speculation, but I think I see a pattern emerging; indeed, I'd be prepared to put a modest bet on their extending the deadline until 2019 rather than taking any more precipate action.
If anyone reading this knows Mr Booker, perhaps they'd ask him if he wouldn't mind accepting a £500 bet from me that the deadline will be thus extended rather than any unilateral ban imposed.
Tim adds: Well, I've met him rather than know him.
Posted by: Not Saussure | Oct 22, 2006 12:05:45 PM
¿And just why SHOULD the US play Europe's stupid little games?
Posted by: Peter Spence | Oct 22, 2006 12:20:42 PM
Whatever about Christopher Booker, he probably picked from US industry association sources the report about the EU permitting use of only metric units for products sold in EU markets from 2010 onwards while prohibiting even mention of any other measurement units. Try this report dated 11 October:
" . . Going well beyond labeling, the metric directive will make the sole use of metric units obligatory in all aspects of life in the European Union, extending to areas such as product literature and advertising. . . "
http://www.tirereview.com/default.aspx?type=wm&module=4&id=2&state=DisplayFullText&item=6341
As the US source appears to be a regular industry association performing a routine function of advising its constituency about pending regulatory changes in export markets, I'm inclined to take the information seriously - and without engaging in the habitual EU Commission and obsessive Europhile practice of smears or impugning the integrity of EU critics.
However, I agree that it is prudent to run checks on news reports carrying direct or implied criticism of the EU: I suggest a fruitful way forward is regular monitoring of google news searches on "EU Metric Directive" to see if the looming situation is as ominous as reported. The official reference is: European Union Council Directive 80/181/EEC (Metric Directive).
I need to say that from personal experience in European online forums years back of any discussion of mandatory switching from imperial to metric measurements, there was already then an evident tendency to suggest that anyone resisting mooted Directives on mandatory metrification was bound to be at least in the early stages of dementia. That's how public debates on EU policy are conducted.
Posted by: Bob B | Oct 22, 2006 12:23:39 PM
Oh dear. We'll have to all start calling it a Royale with Cheese.
Posted by: sortapundit | Oct 22, 2006 12:59:39 PM
Murdoch:
although metric measurements aren't yet comprehensive they inevitably will become so eventually.
So why the joy at applying force to the unbelievers? Why the hard on? Why is the defined metre such a bizarre length? Why are you such an asshole?
Posted by: Mark Holland | Oct 22, 2006 2:29:50 PM
One can argue, at a bloody large push, that the EU might have a case for insisting on metric measures, and I'd disagree if seller and buyer are both happy, but to suggest that you can't have supplemental info is just EUrocratic pedantry.
Posted by: DocBud | Oct 22, 2006 2:49:28 PM
Who pushes these looney, authoritarian Directives? Several past colleagues did stints working in the EU Commission and offered illuminating insights on return to UK posts.
All international organisations where national representation in senior posts is a potentially sensitive issue have endemic institutional problems with promoting staff up through normal career ladders. A frequent way of resolving promotion issues so as to minimise conflicts is to become very bureaucratic about institutional promotion procedures.
Accordingly, in the EU Commission there is an elaborate hierarchy of skills and achievements which staff need to ascend to qualify for promotion - such as ability to participate in multilingual meetings and to promote and negotiate the approval of a new EU Directive by the EU Council (of Ministers).
Commission staff therefore have very personal career incentives to get Directives pushed through to adoption. Of course, the substantive case for some Directives is plain enough but with many harmonising Directives it isn't and then gaining approval can become a matter of doing deals in the margins, like gathering exchanges of support for other ostensibly unrelated prospective Directives on the basis of mutual back scratching exercises.
With a few exceptions, like pints of milk, it is now unlawful for shops and stores to sell fresh produce and haberdashery in anything but metric units. But many supermarkets have continued to post fresh produce prices in both metric and imperial units - a practice which will be outlawed in 2010 by this new Directive. Presumably, supermarkets have continued to bear the cost of posting dual prices of fresh produce for the convenience of their customers and I really can't understand why anyone this side of sanity regards a continuation of that practice as a threat to the progress of Europe.
Posted by: Bob B | Oct 22, 2006 6:03:34 PM
Matthew: "Yeah, Booker's an idiot about EU stuff."
Funny, my impression was exactly the opposite. Have you found lots of mistakes in his books, for instance. Evidence!
Posted by: Little Black Sambo | Oct 22, 2006 9:42:00 PM
... Why is the defined metre such a bizarre length? ...
AFAIK it was a drunken official who hit on the idea of making it twenty Mark_Holland penis-lengths to celebrate the latter's debating skills.
Posted by: Murdoch | Oct 22, 2006 11:19:52 PM
although metric measurements aren't yet comprehensive they inevitably will become so eventually.
I doubt it. To anyone who works in industry, imperial measurements are not as commonplace as metric, but they exist in abundance. Try designing a gas pipeline from, ooh, the north of Sakhalin Island to the South and see what units you'll use for pipeline diameter and flow rate. Of course, the length and wall thickness will be metric, just to keep engineers on their toes. :)
Posted by: Tim Newman | Oct 22, 2006 11:29:03 PM
I see that the old arguement by inevitability has been brought out. Don't the Pro-EU have any better arguements? Probably not.
Posted by: chris | Oct 23, 2006 10:56:16 AM
Tim Newman wrote:
'To anyone who works in industry, imperial measurements are not as commonplace as metric, but they exist in abundance.'
To anyone that works in US industry - largest economy in the world, mind you - the situation is exactly the reverse. Imperial measurement predominates, although metric measure is often seen, is well-understood, and presents no significant issues.
The insistence on the use of metric measure, to the positive exclusion of all others, has nothing to do with accuracy, precision, or the furtherance of commerce, trade, or industry. This latest EU step, if it is indeed as represented, merely shows more-clearly what has been the motivation all along - this is a tool of cultural imperialism, nothing else. The US will go along because it is easy to do, costs little, and is good for business in the long run. The dinosaurs of the EU will pat themselves on the back for having scored this major cultural victory - which is all it will be - and then go back to asking themselves what new and burdensome regulations they can dream up. And the EU economies will continue to circle the pan as money is pi**ed away on this useless claptrap.
llater,
llamas
Posted by: llamas | Oct 23, 2006 11:06:03 AM
"Why is the defined metre such a bizarre length?" Do you mean that the length itself, or its definition is bizarre?
The original definition of the metre "as 1/10,000,000 of the distance from the equator to the north pole through Paris" bears significant similarity in method to the nautical mile being originally defined as "the length of 1 minute of latitude". The original measurement for this put the circumference of the Earth through the poles at 40,000 km; an error of 0.02% against the true figure of 40,007.86 km and not bad for the 1790s. Like most units of measurement, the definition of the metre has undergone revisions, but this is to allow it to be measured more precisely and reliably so that instruments can be calibrated better.
Posted by: Rob Hinkley | Oct 23, 2006 11:32:15 AM
When I first learned of the metric system's existence as a kid--over 60 years ago--it seemed an excellent idea and nothing since then persuades me differently. (Especially as the English system was, even then, laden with arcane, obsolescent, or limited-use units.) The greatest (metric) advantage is simply in the correspodence between units and the decimal-fraction mode of computation. (Try multiplying 2-3/16 X 3-1/7 (pi) on your pocket calculator and you'll get the idea.)
But, before long, I began to see the utter impractibility of converting everything to a single system whether one was "better" or not. There's simply too much already in existence, especially in "tools of production" to make conversion practical--too much (both in time and material) to be lost in the process.
But, by the time I got to high school, I began to see clearly that the real problem was not at all that there were different systems but that there are people who think it's a "good idea" to politicize the difference and criminalize others' choice by passing laws to "harmonize" (if ever there was a contadiction in terms, it's gotta be that). I should have been smart enough to think of a way to make some money out of what I saw in the future--but I wasn't. And I still ain't.
Posted by: gene berman | Oct 23, 2006 3:14:40 PM
What Gene Berman said.
Only to add that decimal computation is not limited to metric (SI) units. The fact that the imperial system has some units based on fractions rather than decimals does not mean those units have to be used. I work (as an ME) primarily in imperial units, but I never deal in feet, or yards, or gallons, or barrels - inches, pounds and seconds are just as adaptable to decimal math as metres, kilograms and seconds are. Those fractional units, however, can be much-more appropriate in other fields of endeavour.
In some fields of endeavour, fractional math actually has distinct advantages over decimal. In land measurement, for example, while the imperial system of chains and acres ASF looks complicated and non-intuitive to the layman, it is actually a finely-crafted, inter-related system which works much better than any apparently-simple decimal system. When Jefferson commissioned the basic survey of the US, he wanted it to be done in the metric/decimal system, but even he finally came to the conclusion that the imperial system based on Gunter's chain was superior.
As to "the correspondence between units and the decimal-fraction mode of computation", I find, after almost 30 years in this business, that that correspondence exists mostly in the pages of physics textbooks, and rapidly evaporates in the real world. Nature is filled with inconsistent variables which quickly drive a coach and horses through the academic artifice of metric unit correspondence.
Let people deal in whatever units of measure best suit their field of endeavour. The most that any state should do is to set standards for any unit that seems to require it, and let people get on with it. A truck driver is not like a microbiologist is not like a pipefitter is not like a jeweller, and there's no practical reason to compel them all to deal in the same, identical system of measure. Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote that 'a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds', and nowhere is this more evident than in the messianic zeal of some people to force their preferred way of measuring onto everybody else.
llater,
llamas
Posted by: llamas | Oct 23, 2006 4:47:04 PM
Mr. Llamas:
Though I can't begin to match your comprehensive (and apparently intimate) knowledge of the subject, I've appreciated some of those points myself for years. F'rinstance, it's simplicity itself (whether on paper or actually) to halve, re-halve, etc. a length.
People have forever been after tools and methods to render living easier (and cheaper). Regarding something as relatively simple as a system of measurement, it is nearly a foregone conclusion that if a newer one offered actual, clear-cut advantage over that already existing, most would concur in prompt replacement. Those who favor imposition of what they believe to be superior systems by authoritarian fiat are alike in their misunderstanding of human
action, whether in decreeing a particular uniformity of weights and measures or in another sphere where they'd wish to institute minimum wages, maximum prices or profits, etc.
By the way, you might be interested in a deduction I made long ago concerning Archimedes and his Eureka! moment. In a nutshell, he did not discover the constant relationship between equal volumes of different substances: these, by necessity, had to have been (relatively widespread)
common knowledge long before his time and something which he, in his day, could ASSUME. His achievement was merely in constructing those relationships in comparison to a volume of water (by means of which even the volume of an irregularly-shaped solid could be determined accurately. It was a major achievement--but a somewhat different one than is normally taught.
I also ought to inform you that I am the inventor of a unit of liquid measure with which almost everyone in the world is familiar. Known as the "glub" (as in "glub, glub,glub"), it refers to the highly uniform and repeatable liquid quantity issuing from the mouth of a bottle when inverted. Very accurate, I've found--as long as you use the same bottle. My plan is to get the EU to adopt the glub and for me to have the franchise to supply the bottles from which the official glub naturally issues.
Posted by: gene berman | Oct 24, 2006 1:28:38 AM
There are of course issues other than purely scientific and trade. Certainly within the UK, and I am in no doubt in the USA too, the imperial system takes on a cultural life of its own.
Sure, the metric system is irrefutably the simpler system to use (having been one of the first to be taught the metric system at school I'm well aware of how much simpler it is that the imperial system my parents were taught). However, when given the choice in my personal life I will almost always refer back to imperial measures. From the pint of beer to the tall "six-footer" prop foward, imperial measurements pervade everyday language.
By imposing this kind of directive the EU moves as much into cultural totalitarianism as economic homogeneity.
Posted by: augustine-in-hell | Nov 22, 2006 8:20:46 AM
