The European Union has finally admitted defeat in its long-running and "pointless" campaign to outlaw British pints, miles and ounces.

The decision to abandon plans to replace traditional imperial weights and measures with metric units was announced by Gunter Verheugen, Europe’s Industry Commissioner, who conceded: “This is a pointless battle. . . there was absolutely no point at all in trying to get rid of the particular heritage of one member state.”

After a wide-ranging consultation, European commissioners agreed unanimously that beer, roads and apples could be measured in the UK by whatever unit local people choose to use.

The imperial cause had become a rallying point for Eurosceptics, especially on the Right, and cynics suggested that the EU concession was designed to soften opposition to the planned European Constitution.

The dispute over the UK's right to keep its traditional measurements was at its height when four so-called “metric martyrs” were prosecuted for failing to trade in both Imperial and metric measures.

The market trader Steve Thorburn, convicted of selling bananas by the pound in 2001, was the most famous of those campaigners.

Neil Herron, campaign director of the Metric Martyrs, welcomed today's news but said he would be continuing the fight to clear the name of Mr Thoburn, who died in 2004.

“At last someone has exercised an ounce of commonsense but the disgrace is that it has had to come from Brussels and not Westminster,” said Mr Herron.

The UK’s commitment to metric units actually pre-dates British EU membership, but after joining the union the Government announced that imperial measures would be phased out by 2009.

The whole saga began in 1969 when the UK metrication board was set up four years before Britain joined the Common Market. The impetus at the time came from British industry as it was thought that a unified set of measurements would ease European trade.

Almost forty years later the EU has concluded that trade is unaffected by the discrepancy in measurements; indeed exports to the US may be aided by the inclusion of imperial measures alongside metric on British produce.

The European Industry Commissioner now says he cannot even understand why there was ever a movement to homogenise measurements.

“When I looked into this matter it was obvious to me that there was no reason why imperial measures should go. And then we held a very wide-ranging consultation which confirmed how unpopular this move was,” Mr Verheugen said. “I think up to that point nobody had really asked the obvious question which is ’do we really need [to ban] it?’

“Things such as pints and miles and feet and inches are what makes us love Britain. We don’t want to get rid of them. The idea that you could not go for a pint in a pub in Britain is not acceptable.”

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