The European Commission (EC) has announced its new short-term measures that will strengthen the EU’s defense against unfair trade practices, as well as longer-term action to guarantee the long-term competitiveness and sustainability of energy-intensive industries like steel.
Accordingly, the commission stated that it will further accelerate the adoption of antidumping measures and stands ready to make additional proposals to speed up the overall procedure and improve the efficiency of the current system. It also stated that to further improve the efficiency and effectiveness of EU action, the trade defense instruments need to be modernized. Moreover, the consultation process of member states should be significantly streamlined; therefore, this would allow speeding up the overall procedure by up to two months.
According to the EC’s statement, the recent experience furthermore shows that additional reforms need to be considered, taking into account the inter-institutional debate and most recent developments, for example, the rationale for the removal of the lesser-duty rule should apply also to the steel sector and more generally to situations where the market of the exporting country is subject to significant distortions. In addition, it may be appropriate with regard to the calculation of the injury margin to better define the target profit to ensure that injury is adequately removed.