Cheers! Victory for MoS on EU’s pint Crown ban
IT WAS The Mail on Sunday’s story that had Remainers choking on their beer.
Headlined ‘Cheers Ma’am!’, the story ahead of the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee earlier this year told how the Government was bringing back the Crown symbol on pint glasses 18 years after the EU ordered us to remove the patriotic symbol.
And now the press regulator has decided that the MoS was right to publish the story.
The Independent Press Standards Organisation (IPSO) dismissed hundreds of complaints that it was wrong to say that the EU had ordered the UK to remove the Crown symbol.
It rejected the complaints that this newspaper had breached Clause 1 (Accuracy) of the Editors’ Code of Practice in the May 29 report announcing post-Brexit plans to restore the symbol. IPSO received 333 complaints, saying the article was inaccurate because they considered that the EU did not ‘order’ the UK to remove the Crown symbol from pint glasses.
An accompanying story stated: ‘In 2004, the EU Measuring Instruments Directive, which came into force in 2006, required the EU-wide CE mark to be added to pint glasses.’
A Government source was quoted saying the legal requirement to use the CE mark led to the effective removal of the Crown symbol as the UK ‘could not have two competing indications of conformity’.
The Mail on Sunday pointed out that the European Commission’s Blue Guide on the implementation of EU product rules stated that ‘the CE marking replaces all mandatory conformity markings having the same meaning, which existed before harmonisation took place. Such national conformity markings are incompatible with CE marking and would constitute an infringement of the applicable European legislation in question.’
IPSO’s complaints committee said: ‘Given there was no dispute that the Crown symbol had indeed carried the same meaning as the CE marking, it was neither inaccurate nor misleading to state that the use of the Crown symbol had been “banned” as a result of the legislation, or that the legislation amounted to an “order” to remove it…. There was no breach of Clause 1 of the Code… The complaint was not upheld.’