The European Union hopes to have its proposed anti-dumping legislation adopted by the end of 2017, according to Aleksandra Kozlowska, a policy officer for steel at the European Commission.
“We hope to have the new anti-dumping rules in place by the end of the year, following the conclusion of the negotiations between the commission, the European Council and the European Parliament,” Kozlowska told delegates at European steel federation EUROMETAL’s regional meeting in Copenhagen, Denmark, on Thursday June 8
“The new methodology will only apply to new anti-dumping cases,” Kozlowska said.
The EC proposed tougher regulations to combat under-priced steel imports from state-backed or state-owned organisations in November 2016.
The proposed methodology for calculating dumping on imports from countries where there are “significant market distortions” would involve the removal of the distinction between market economy and non-market economy countries, and would “be applied equally to all members of the World Trade Organization (WTO)”, the EC said at the time.
The EC proposal also includes issuing specific country reports for every country with “significant market distortions”.
“We also hope to issue a report on identifying market distortions in China by the end of the year,” Kozlowska said.
The move to change the EC’s anti-dumping calculation methodology came as China, the world’s largest steel-producing nation, asked fellow member nations of the WTO “to honour their WTO obligations and terminate the use of the surrogate methodology on time” after December 11, 2016.
A provision in China’s 2001 accession agreement with the WTO allowed other countries to treat it as a non-market economy, but this provision expired on December 11, 2016.
European imports of key steel products from countries involved in trade cases fell significantly in the first quarter of 2017, EUROMETAL said on May 19.
Viral Shah viral.shah@metalbulletin.com
