Scotland - Indication By European Court on legality of MUP

The European Court of Justice (ECJ) has today released an initial ruling on the legality of the introduction of a Minimum Unit Price (MUP) for alcohol in Scotland, which appears to support the challenge by the Scottish whiskey Association.

The court's Advocate General Yves Bot said a minimum unit pricing system risked infringing the principle of the free movement of goods and would only be legal if it could be shown that no other mechanism was capable of achieving the desired result of protecting public health. Clearly, other mechanisms such as taxation exist.

He went on to state that the system would need to demonstrate “additional advantages or fewer disadvantages by comparison with the alternative measure".

So far we have not seen an official response from the Scottish Executive but it is reported that ministers regard the European court's preliminary ruling as "better than expected" as it "does not preclude" minimum pricing.

However, we are long way off a final decision The European court is expected at least a further six months to issue its final ruling, before the case is referred back to the Court of Session in Edinburgh.

Update 4 September 2015 – the actual opinion, referred to above, can be found here.