War for Oil

Brusselscrats have surrendered in the olive-oil-on-the-restaurant-table-flap;

If the initiative had prospered, on January 1, 2014 every single restaurant from Athens to Helsinki would have had to eliminate the refillable oil dispensers that customers use to dress their salads or add flavor to their bread while they wait for the main course. Instead, establishments would have had to provide single-dose packages or sealed bottles to prove that there really is olive oil inside and that nobody has refilled the cruets with a lower-quality product.

Apparently European palates were thought not to be refined enough to taste the difference. In Portugal, at any rate, that's the law;

In January 2006, Portuguese law banned the traditional refillable oil cruets from restaurants. In general terms, this legislation is observed. [Lisbon restaurateur] Luis says it is more expensive this way, because each 250-centiliter bottle costs him a euro. A one-liter bottle is two euros, and before that, when he used to buy the olive oil wholesale from his village, it was even cheaper. "But it's the law," he shrugs.

....Producers defend the law. In recent statements to the daily Diario de Notícias, a spokesperson for the Federation of Oil Cooperatives of Portugal said that ever since the legislation went into effect, "the quality of the product that is served at Portuguese restaurants has gone up significantly and if prices have gone up significantly too, that means that what used to be served was not oil."

The above is under the headline; 

Pricier salad, happier producers in Portugal.  

We wonder, who is it who polices the bottlers?