EUROMETAL at European Commission to address challenges facing the EU Steel Value Chain
EUROMETAL held two high-level meetings today at the European Commission to raise urgent concerns impacting the European steel distribution, processing, and manufacturing sectors.
The meetings focused on EU trade policy and the ongoing implementation of the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM).
EUROMETAL was represented by President Alexander Julius, Vice-President Fernando Espada, Board Member Jaap Jan Aardenburg and Director General Ricardo Silva.
Protecting the integrity of the EU Steel Supply Chain
In its meeting with the European Commission’s trade department (DG TRADE) held with the participation of cabinet experts from Cabinet of Commissioner Maroš Šefčovič and Cabinet of Vice-President Stéphane Séjourné, EUROMETAL emphasized the growing threat posed by imported, ready-made steel-based products, which are increasingly replacing goods manufactured within the EU. This trend is having a damaging impact on the entire European steel value chain, affecting distribution, logistics, and processing, and ultimately threatening the 13.6 million direct jobs supported by manufacturing in Europe.
EUROMETAL also raised concerns that the current Steel Action Plan fails to sufficiently acknowledge and support these downstream sectors, despite their central role in delivering a green and sovereign industrial transition in Europe.
The discussion confirmed the need for continued dialogue, cooperation, and evidence-based advocacy. To strengthen its position, EUROMETAL will now intensify engagement with its members, national federations, sector associations, and individual companies to gather data and reinforce the case for policy adjustments.
CBAM implementation: clarification and fairness needed
In a second meeting with the European Commission’s taxation department (DG TAXUD), EUROMETAL met with Vicente Hurtado Roa, Head of Unit for CBAM, and addressed several critical aspects of the CBAM framework, particularly the challenges facing steel importers and declarants in implementing current CBAM rules.
Key concerns included the practicality of CBAM procedures, the impact on contractual obligations and supply chains, and the urgent need to include key TARIC codes for steel-based products. Excluding these codes risks causing carbon leakage and further undermining the competitiveness of European manufacturing.
The Commission confirmed that technical adjustments to the CBAM regulation are still in progress, with updates expected by the end of 2025. EUROMETAL will continue to provide technical data and recommendations, particularly in relation to TARIC code classifications, to help ensure that the final regulation reflects the realities of the steel industry.
These meetings reaffirmed EUROMETAL’s commitment to ensuring fair trade conditions, supporting EU-based steel supply chain actors, and safeguarding industrial competitiveness in a fast-changing policy landscape.
EUROMETAL will remain actively engaged with EU institutions and stakeholders to advocate for a strong, sustainable, and resilient European steel sector.
Hydrogen should be prioritised for steel production: OECD
Hydrogen should be prioritised for steel sector decarbonisation over other possible applications, the OECD says in a new report seen by Kallanish.
It notes that steel needs to compete with other industries in securing limited hydrogen resources, despite the gas being used in the steelmaking process being considered a high value application.
The report says that given its significant potential to reduce emissions by up to 90% in the steel industry compared to other sectors, its use in the steel sector is considered important. It therefore calls for the prioritising of green hydrogen supplies to the industry.
Current hydrogen production is limited, mostly based on fossil fuels, and mostly feeding production processes in other sectors. Renewable or green hydrogen is only available in very limited quantities.
Recent OECD estimates expect excess capacity to reach 630 million tonnes by 2026. This corresponds roughly to the amount of hydrogen-based steelmaking capacity that needs to come online to achieve net-zero goals by 2050 in the most ambitious decarbonisation scenarios for hydrogen-based steelmaking developments.
OECD figures show that a total of 164mt of direct reduced iron capacity is in the planning and construction phase until 2030, of which only 15mt (9.2%) is based on hydrogen. The vast majority is based on natural gas DRI, with some gradually switching to hydrogen as it becomes available for steelmaking.
The range of estimates for carbon neutral steelmaking by 2050 assign a prominent role for hydrogen-based DRI solutions. These range between 370-873mt, corresponding to 20-40% of the estimates for total production in 2050. With subdued global demand projections, the build-up of these capacities needs to be accompanied by the exit of emission-intensive facilities to avoid furthering excess capacity.
The organisation also notes the importance of hydrogen-based projects being located where they make most sense from a market perspective and in regions that are not plagued by excess capacity. The opportunity to use hydrogen in steelmaking should be balanced against other possible decarbonisation routes for the sector, it adds.
While hydrogen-based steelmaking currently faces significant cost and competitiveness challenges, these will likely subside in the future as the technology matures. Cost constraints of green hydrogen should also reduce as access to renewable energy improves and electrolyser costs diminish, it says.
Steelmakers may adopt gradual phase-in strategies to keep up with the pace of developments in green hydrogen markets. It also notes the role governments are playing in bringing hydrogen to the market, with many highlighting the role the fuel will play for the steel sector in their national hydrogen strategies.
It also warns that while the majority of DRI projects are built under the premise of using natural gas as a transition fuel, it is key that support provided is conditional upon the adoption of green hydrogen at a certain stage to ensure that carbon is not locked in.
Carrie Bone UK
Worsening overcapacity forecast shows post-safeguard measure urgency: Eurofer
The need for EU post-safeguard measures has been amplified further by the OECD’s latest finding that excess global steel capacity will grow from 602 million tonnes in 2024 to 721mt by 2027, five times the size of EU production, warns Eurofer.
At its meeting this week, the OECD Steel Committee concluded that growing overcapacity has resulted in a surge in exports of low-priced steel that is threatening Steel Committee members’ production. Chinese steel exports have more than doubled since 2020, surging to 118mt in 2024, while the country’s steel imports plunged by almost 80% to 8.7mt. Profitability continued to decline in 2024 and a growing number of countries have taken trade action.
“Without policy adjustments in countries that are fuelling the excess capacity, or disincentives for them to export their surplus steel, global steel industry problems will intensify,” OECD Steel Committee chair Ulf Zumkley noted after the meeting. Global overcapacity growing to 721mt will put “enormous pressures on the viability of even highly competitive steelmakers”, he continued.
The reduced profitability continues to hamper the steel industry’s available capital and therefore efforts to decarbonise.
“The trends illustrated by the OECD prove that the global steel overcapacity problem not only remains unsolved but it’s constantly and significantly worsening. This unsustainable situation points to the shortcomings of the EU safeguards where the growing disconnection between imports allowed into the EU market and actual demand cannot be addressed,” Eurofer director general Axel Eggert says in a note sent to Kallanish.
As part of its Steel & Metals Action plan published last month, the European Commission said it would present by the third quarter a measure to replace the steel safeguard mechanism from 1 July 2026.
Adam Smith Poland
Trump exempts steel from nation-specific ‘reciprocal’ tariffs
US President Donald Trump has unveiled his long-awaited “reciprocal” tariff plan, slapping trading partners with additional levies but initially exempting steel from the new nation-specific measures, Kallanish confirms.
Trump on Wednesday instituted a new global 10% tariff on all US imports and confirmed his previously announced 25% tariff on all auto imports. The 10% blanket tariff takes effect Saturday. Reciprocal tariffs begin 9 April.
Customised reciprocal tariffs, meant to offset equivalent measures against US exports, are on top of prior levies and duties. Trump’s executive order, signed Wednesday, specifically exempts steel imports and also goods from Mexico and Canada, all of which were subject to earlier, separate tariff regimes.
The exemption for steel is notable, because the world’s leading steel exporters are among the hardest-hit on their national reciprocal tariff rates. Vietnam is assigned a US reciprocal tariff of 46%, China is charged 34%, Taiwan is assessed at 32%, India is at 26%, South Korea 25%, Japan 24% and the EU 20%. Turkish and Brazilian exports received a lower reciprocal tariff, each at 10%.
In a speech at the White House, Trump promised that the reciprocal tariffs and his other trade measures will spur the greatest national transformation in the history of the world. He said the combined impact will catalyse a renaissance in US manufacturing, boosting segments ranging from auto and motorcycle production and energy infrastructure to shipbuilding and high-tech construction.
Trump is instituting the new tariffs under a rationale that the US trade deficit poses a national security emergency.
“Foreign cheaters have ransacked our factories,” the president contends. “It is not going to happen anymore. … We will supercharge our domestic industrial base.”
Regarding reciprocal tariffs, Trump earlier had promised that the US would add up all of a trading partner’s tariffs, non-tariff barriers and value-added taxes on US exports, plus other factors such as alleged currency manipulation, stolen intellectual property and pollution impacts. The US then would charge new levies on that country’s exports equal to the combined cost of the above. However, in explaining the methodology on Wednesday, the president said the reciprocal tariff rates represent only half of the calculated combined cost.
A White House fact sheet states that Canada and Mexico eventually may be subject to 12% reciprocal tariffs on goods not in compliance with the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement.
Trump added a message for foreign nations’ leaders who intend to contact him to ask for a break on the reciprocal tariffs: Remove your own tariffs against US exports, drop other barriers and “start buying tens of billions of dollars of American goods.”
Dom Yanchunas USA