BRUSSELS, Feb 12 (Reuters) - European Union regulators opened three new anti-dumping investigations into Chinese steel products on Friday, responding to calls from European industry for protection from cheap imports that they blame for thousands of job losses in Europe.
The EU executive also announced provisional anti-dumping duties on cold-rolled flat steel from China and Russia. The duties range from 13.8 percent to 16 percent for the Chinese companies and from 19.8 percent to 26.2 percent for the Russian ones.
The new steel investigations concern whether seamless pipes, heavy plates and hot-rolled flat steel are being sold into Europe at unfairly low prices.
"We cannot allow unfair competition from artificially cheap imports to threaten our industry," EU Trade Commissioner Cecilia Malmstrom said in a statement. "I am determined to use all means possible to ensure that our trading partners play by the rules."
The EU has the power to impose duties on imported products if it finds they are sold at below fair market prices and damage European producers.Seven countries including Britain, France and Germany wrote to the Commission last week urging it to step up action to relieve Europe's ailing steel industry, which is suffering from tumbling prices and cheap imports from China and Russia.
Europe has lost 85,000 steel jobs since 2008, more than 20 percent of the workforce, according to the industry body Eurofer.
China's Ministry of Commerce said last week that claims it was dumping steel in Europe should be put to the World Trade Organization.
China makes nearly half the world's 1.6 billion tonnes of steel, and exported over 100 million tonnes of it last year.
Britain's largest steelmaker Tata Steel Ltd said last month it would cut 1,050 British jobs, adding to 4,000 job losses in the British steel industry last October.
As well as targeting steel dumping, the Commission on Friday announced the extension of duties to prevent imports of dumped and subsidised Chinese solar panel components via Taiwan and Malaysia.
An investigation concluded Chinese-made solar modules and cells were being trans-shipped via Taiwan and Malaysia and to prevent the practice continuing, existing anti-dumping and anti-subsidy duties were being extended to those two countries.
It said the new duties would not, however, apply to genuine producers in Taiwan and Malaysia.
Since the investigation began, solar components from Taiwan and Malaysia had to be registered, meaning national customs authorities in the European Union can now retroactively collect the duties for the months since May last year REUTERS
No comments :
Post a Comment