Liz welcomes reprieve from threat to British Hallmarking

1.50.13pm UTC (GMT +0000) Thu 22nd Jan 2004

West Midlands Euro-MP Liz Lynne has welcomed the announcement that the

proposed EU Hallmarking Directive, has been taken off the agenda for the

foreseeable future.

Liz became involved with this issue following discussions with the

Birmingham Assay Office and representatives from the Jewellery Quarter,

who argued against the proposals in their present form.

Welcoming yesterday's statement by Lord Sainsbury in the House of Lords,

Liz said:

"This is a victory for common sense. These proposals have been

languishing for more than a decade and only re-emerged when Italy took

over the Presidency of the European Union.

"The proposed EU Directive on Precious Metals sought to introduce

community-wide regulations on hallmarking. The directive did not include

sufficient safeguards to ensure quality standards or traceability. The

British Hallmarking tradition has worked well for 700 years and there is

no reason to compromise it in this way now.

"It is highly unlikely that the Irish will want to push these proposals

forward as there is very little support for it across Europe. The same

goes for the Dutch who take over in July 2004. So we can be reasonably

sure that this directive will be off the agenda for at least the next 12

months, and hopefully even longer than that."