EU protection against imports must be extended to downstream steel-using goods to avoid the collapse of Europe’s end user industries, while the government, although now finally taking steelmaking seriously, must move immediately to save the industry, concluded Polish industry representatives during Friday’s European Economic Congress in Katowice.
Opinion was however mixed on whether governments need to nationalise the steel industry to support it through hard times.
While EU safeguards curtailed imports of steel, countries changed tack and started to supply steel-containing end products to the EU, such as telecom towers and nails, with most of these coming from China, Polish Steel Union of Distributors’ (PUDS) chief executive Iwona Dybal said at the meeting attended by Kallanish. 2024 data show Polish end-use production dropped due to these imports, “and this is just the beginning”, Dybal warned, pointing to the risk of US tariff-induced trade diversion.
Grzegorz Jagielski from the Polish industry ministry’s mining and metallurgy department said that while government has had its finger on the coal market pulse for a while, it has only recently started closely consulting with steelmakers. The focus on defence has made the industry even more critical. Authorities are preparing a plan that will define a national industrial policy to support steelmaking, he added.
Despite running a first-class business, distributor Stalprofil is “helpless” against the environment it finds itself in, high energy costs and “unfair” steel imports, all factors which lie in the control of government, said the firm’s ceo, Henryk Orczykowski. With a war on, the government must act with military efficiency to save industry, he demanded.
Although US President Donald Trump is not a good example in all cases, “when it comes to the speed of making a decision, and effectiveness, we really have to go with the geopolitical current that is currently happening,” Orczykowski asserted.
The proposed melt and pour rule for EU trade defence instruments (TDIs), while not solving everything, will help increase effectiveness of trade, having implications for TDIs, for Russian sanctions and for the carbon footprint of imports, said Polish Steel Association (HIPH) ceo Moryslaw Motyka.
Carbon capture, utilisation and storage (CCUS) will undoubtedly be part of the EU steel industry’s future, with ArcelorMittal Poland (AMP) planning to install a unit later at its “very heavily invested into” blast furnace, said ceo Wojciech Koszuta.
Asked about whether and how the state should intervene in private business in today’s difficult economic conditions, Cognor ceo Przemyslaw Sztuczkowski said that although he is a liberal at heart, “globalisation has been broken for a simple reason – we’ve been tricked.” Globalisation only works when all players operate under the same conditions, which is not the case with subsidies for the steel industry in countries like China, he added.
This process has led to the election of Trump and will likely also lead to big changes in the EU, he continued. The EU was very careful for years not to give any state aid to industry. “Now we’ve totally lost control – that’s the drama of globalisation,” he asserted.
“Nationalisation is not the solution to all problems,” pointed out state-owned Weglokoks ceo Tomasz Slezak. It will not change energy prices or demand on the market. The current trend is a recognition by governments of the importance of certain sectors for national security, he added, after the moderator had brought up the recent example of British Steel being taken over by UK government. There is a parrel between this and Weglokoks which recently took over Huta Czestochowa in Poland.
The state does not necessarily need to own industrial assets to ensure their survival, said Polish coke producer Koksownia Czestochowa Nowa ceo Marek Serafin. Trump has shown it is possible in the US to have certain control over regulation and resources, to dictate the direction of the economy, without state ownership, he added.
Adam Smith Poland
