THE DAILY TELEGRAPH

By Helen Cranford in Brussels

A MEASURE to protect consumers during the changeover to a single currency was announced yesterday by Emma Bonino, European Commissioner for Consumer Affairs.

Her proposal would compel all stores to display dual sets of prices.

Mrs Bonino proposes to sweep away a number of complex and contradictory directives and to replace them with a "simple, three. page set of rules" by June 1997.

These would oblige shops to indicate the price by volume or quantity, as well as by item, before, during and after economic and monetary union, she said. The old rules had, for instance, required retailers to mark the price per litre for 250 gramme tubs of ice cream. but not for 300 gramme containers.

Another anomaly had been the need to indicate the price per kilo on 25Og or 500g jars of jam and tinned vegetables, whnre the arithmetic was obvious, but not for un usual sizes, where it was not.

Mrs Bonino said the new rules would apply to all sizes, except where this did not make sense. "Marking trucks or armchairs per kilo or curtains, pet centimetre would be ridiculous and not in the consumer's interest."