Bülent Hacıoğlu, managing partner at Trade Resources, shared his views with SteelOrbis as follows on the EU's new protection restrictions and their repercussions.
On October 7, 2025, the European Union finally announced the details and draft legislation of the new trade restrictions it will implement in place of the steel safeguard measures which it is obliged to end in 2026. This development came as no surprise to those closely following trade policy developments, as the EU’s Steel and Metal Action Plan published in early 2025 clearly stated that a new measure would be implemented after the safeguard and that the details would be announced later.
Before the details of the measure were known, the question which aroused the greatest curiosity was what legal basis the new measure would be grounded in. The national security justification, which also forms the basis for the US Section 232 tariffs, seemed to be the most likely option. However, the European Union announced that the new measure is based on the modification of tariff rate concessions under GATT Article 28. This article grants WTO members the right to modify or withdraw their bound tariff rates, but such modifications must be made in consultation with the affected supplier countries and in exchange for compensatory concessions. Therefore, based on this article rather than national security, the European Union has chosen a more “rule-based” but also a potentially much more difficult and costly path for itself. Indeed, the announced text clearly states that negotiation processes will be conducted with the affected countries and with countries that have signed free trade agreements (FTAs).
Another noteworthy point in the announced bill is the distribution of the new quotas to be determined. It is stated that the total and product-based quotas will be determined based on the share of imports in the EU market as of 2013 (13%) and also the share of each product category in total imports during the 2022-2024 period. However, the text does not provide a clear formula for how much each country will receive from the relevant product quota. Criteria to be considered in determining country shares include trade agreements, international agreements on “global overcapacity,” maintaining source diversity, and the “situation of candidate countries facing exceptional security risks”. These criteria resemble the language used by the EU in its safeguard measure process, which will end in 2026. Based on these, it can be predicted that China will be targeted and that exceptions will be granted to Ukraine. However, most importantly, it is understood that the country quotas under the current safeguard period will not be maintained and that the “cards will be reshuffled”. It is not difficult to predict that the EU will enter into very tough negotiations with its main steel supplier countries.
The text also states that, in addition to the country of origin, the “melt and pour” country will also be tracked in steel imports. Although there is no provision stating that country quotas will be regulated based on the “melt and pour” principle rather than the country of origin, it is clear that the EU intends to keep this option open and activate it when necessary.
Since the WTO was established in 1995, we have probably heard the term “steel trade war” hundreds of times. For many years, the main tools of these “wars” were trade policy measures known as antidumping, anti-subsidy and safeguard measures, and new antidumping and subsidy investigations for steel products continue to emerge. However, following the US' implementation of its Section 232 measures in 2018, along with the EU's “latest model” trade restrictions, the two giants, representing approximately 30 percent of the world economy, have now put their own measures into effect.