EU seeks to speed up trade defence against cheap Chinese steel

[BRUSSELS] The European Commission announced plans on Wednesday to speed up trade defence cases against cheap imports from China and urged EU member states to stop blocking measures that could set higher duties against dumped and subsidised products.

In proposals specifically targeted to protect the steel sector, the Commission said it would seek to cut the period it takes from the launch of an investigation to the imposition of tariffs, which at nine months the industry says is too long.

Britain, France and Germany are among the countries to have asked the Commission to help the steel industry, which is suffering from an import surge from China in particular and collapsing prices.

Some 4,000 British steel jobs were lost in October 2015 alone, equivalent to about a fifth of the sector's workforce. The head of Britain's largest steelmaker, Tata Steel Europe, has said it is impossible to compete with China when Beijing intervenes to prop up loss-making plants.

EU leaders are set to discuss steel briefly during a summit in Brussels on Thursday and Friday.

The Commission said it was now for the member states to adopt proposals to update trade defence measures that it put forward in 2013.

One such measure would be the removal of the so-called lesser duty rule, which limits the tariffs that can be imposed on dumped or unfairly subsidised imports.

The Commission also said it alone might be able to cut the timeframe for tariff imposition to eight from nine months, but would need legislation, and therefore EU member state approval, to bring it down to seven.

This was a rare area on which the industry and environmentalists could agree.

European steelmakers association Eurofer said the United States should be the benchmark, with anti-dumping tariffs applied on average within four-and-a-half months and duties applied up to the maximum level.

For cold-rolled steel products, provisional duties against China were between 13.8 and 16 per cent, compared with a "dumping margin" of up to 59.1 per cent and tariffs applied by the United States earlier this month of some 265 per cent.

Reinhard Buetikofer, industrial spokesman for the Greens in the European Parliament, said EU governments needed to stop writing letters to the Commission and to do their "homework"themselves. "For too long they have blocked a reform of EU anti-dumping instruments," he said.

REUTERS