While the final bottle of duty-free spirits has two years yet to be sold, Brussels this week firmly called last orders on what it sees as an anachronistic perk well past its sell-by date. More accustomed to charm offensives, the Commission, bombarded by a massive lobbying campaign, is now playing hardball, warning the hyper-active, duty-free lobby that its time was up. Duty-free sales, which confer a tax advantage of more that £1. 5 billion annually, will end in June 1999 as planned. EU taxation Commissioner Mario Monti bluntly told a Brussels conference this week on the future of duty-free that it had no future. Monti dismissed suggestions of a doomsday scenario involving the loss of 150,000 jobs with bankrupt airlines and ferries as "implausible". The conference was told that the trade distortions created by duty-free was incompatible with a single market and operators, like Aer Rianta, were urged to bite the bullet and seek alternative sources of income in advance of the cut-off point. The rebellion goes on but ammunition stocks, if not spirits, are running low.