EU Metric Directive Update

The use of units of measurement is prescribed in the European Union by means of Council Directive 80/181/EEC of 20 December 1979. Last updated in 1999, the Commission services is considering amending it, primarily to eliminate its ban on dual units beginning in the year 2010.

For more information, visit the European Commission Directorate-General for Enterprise & Industry page on the public consultation — update for units of measurement directive, which includes a copy of the Working Document on Units of Measurement (PDF, 68K, 9pp) that explains the issues, as well as public comments received in response to the request for comments.

Current status

Various press reports in May 2007 indicate that the European Commission has dropped its opposition to “supplementary indications,” the EU measurement directive's term for dual units. According to a spokesperson, EU Industry Commissioner Günter Verheugen will introduce a proposal to eliminate the 1 January 2010 ban on supplementary indications.

This proposal wouldn't eliminate the requirement to use metric units, of course; it would merely allow the option to also include other units. Perhaps paradoxically, this could benefit U.S. metrication efforts: By changing European law to permit U.S. dual-marked goods to be imported, rather than banning them in 2010, Europe increases pressure on the U.S. to return the favor by amending the Fair Packaging and Labeling Act to permit metric-only labels, allowing imports of European goods with metric-only labels. That, in turn, would give U.S. companies the option of dropping non-metric measurements from their labels.

A brief summary of the issue

Read the Working Document for details, but here is a very brief summary of a couple of the issues, to give an idea of the reasons the Directive might be updated.

Most of the issues are related to the directive's upcoming ban on “supplementary indications” in 2010, meaning products, labels, instructions, etc., would not be permitted to show dual units; they must use and show only metric units.

Imports and exports

The EU wants the U.S. to amend its laws to permit metric-only labels, so EU companies won't have to relabel their products for export to the U.S.; the U.S. is in the process of doing that. However, if the EU Directive ban on supplementary units takes effect, then U.S. companies will have to relabel their products for export to the EU after 2009.

As the working document says, “this would be a strange way of thanking the U.S. for adapting their state and federal laws to conform to international standards. By requiring metric-only labeling the EU would be imposing a new barrier on trade to products from the U.S.”

Scoops, pixels, bits, and bytes

The ban on supplementary units might, depending on how it's interpreted, outlaw laundry detergent measured in scoops, cameras with resolutions measured in pixels, and computers with memory measured in bits and bytes, among other things. Needless to say, scoops, pixels, bits, and bytes are not SI units.

Similar problems arise for widely used but non-SI measures like pH for measuring acidity and alkalinity. In fact, even SI units such as the katal are a problem, because the directive was enacted before the katal was added to SI in 1999.

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