The EU Tax Commissioner Mario Monti has insisted duty-free sales will be abolished in June next year as scheduled, despite calls for them to be retained.

He described duty-free arrangements as a "regressive tax" which subsidised drinkers and smokers at the expense of those who abstained.

Jonathan Beale: An issue on which Britain is united with France and Germany

Mr Monti said: "Go it must. Harmful would be the continuation of duty-free, not its abolition."

The UK, France and Germany say the scrapping of duty-free will mean job losses and higher costs for travellers.

Germany's finance minister, Oskar Lafontaine, has promised to make keeping duty-free a priority of the German presidency.

Monti: Duty-free is "harmful"

The UK Prime Minister Tony Blair and his French counterpart Lionel Jospin are expected to raise the issue at the EU summit in Vienna on Friday.

EU states adopted duty-free sales in 1991. But they agreed on abolishing the system two years ago because it is seen as incompatible with the single market.

Tony Blair...wants to save duty-free

A recent study, commissioned by Kent County Council, predicted 9,000 jobs might be lost in the county, with Dover bearing the blunt of the losses.

At a recent rally in the town Malcolm Dunning, of the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers, said: "Abolition is a dogmatic view built on a theory that duty free is inconsistent with the concept of a single market."

Critics of the abolition of duty-free say ferry and airline companies will hike up their prices to make up for the loss of income.