Speaking at the Eurometal Steel Day and the 10th YISAD Flat Steel Conference in Istanbul on Tuesday April 8, Di Gianni detailed the recent regulations introduced by the European Commission.
The Commission intends to tighten current steel trade defense measures, improve regulations for the prevention of carbon leakage and provide affordable clean energy to support the steel industry, according to a draft version of the European Steel and Metals Action Plan.
One of the most important points in the plan is the ‘melted and poured’ rule, which basically will mean that the Commission will be able to trace the origin of steel exported into Europe.
For example, if hot-rolled coil is exported to Europe from Turkey but the slab used to produce the HRC was from China, the Commission may impose the import duty for slab of Chinese origin. The exporters and buyers will be required to trace the production origin of the end-materials.
Such investigations into the origin may go back retrospectively by three years, Di Gianni said in his presentation to the conference.
Conference delegate Ahmet Soybaş, partner at Soybaş Steel, asked how the origin of hot-dipped galvanized coil would be traced.
For instance, a galvanizer may buy Turkish HRC, galvanize it, and then export it to Europe. The end-producer cannot know the origin of the slab, Soybaş said, because it bought HRC as substrate. Di Gianni said that the European Commission would investigate why the galvanizing was done in Turkey. “Was it in order to [avoid] duties on Chinese HDG? That is the question the Commission will ask,” Di Gianni said.
Tayfun İşeri, coordinator at Colakoglu Metallurgy, asked how end-users such as automotive exporters would know the location of melting. “How will this be traceable?” he asked.
He also said that if a producer used locally produced slab to make HRC for export to Europe, and then used imported slab for HRC to be consumed locally, how would the Commission be able to know the difference in the final materials?
Di Gianni said that details on all these points were not clear yet but the Commission was expected to announce details by the end of the third quarter of 2025.
He added that the Commission was also planning to impose limits on scrap exports from Europe by September.
