The European Steel Association (EUROFER) and industriAll European Trade Union have issued a joint call for action by policy makers to ward off further job losses in the steel sector.
The call comes as EU ministers meet today, November 9, for an extraordinary Competitiveness Council, held in reaction to announcements from the steel industry of job losses and redundancies. Across Europe, with the UK particularly affected, around 5,000 jobs have been lost in the steel industry in the past month alone. There is a real and present threat to the 330,000 workers in the steel sector, a headcount down 85,000 since 2008, the joint statement noted.
Significantly, industriAll Europe and EUROFER call on EU member states to pay particular attention to the fact that granting market economy status to China when it does not meet the technical criteria to be considered a market economy would be devastating for a number of manufacturing sectors in the EU as the possibility to impose antidumping measures on cheap Chinese imports would then largely disappear.