EU holding back for final US offer before imposing sanctions

EU holding back for final US offer before imposing sanctions

Deadline given by the US authorities with regard to the product exclusions is expiring on July 3, 2002 and as from this day the Eurpoean Union is holding back to get the outlook of the product exclusions won from the tariffs of upto 30% and will come to a decision whether to apply the retaliatory tariffs or not. New exemptions are expected to be heard on Wednesday. Time allowed for the European Commission to report the latest status of the negotiations, exemptions, compensation offers by the US to the Council is until July 19, 2002 before the conclusion of the issue. EU Commision state that the set deadline to such date is in order to be able to get the whole picture of the US offer of compensations prior to making the decisions for slapping the retaliatory tariffs of approximately €379million from August 2002. At first stage some crucial goods as fruitjuice and steel products are planned to be involved in the retaliatory tariffs. So far several countries as well as the EU have requested WTO panel to rule on the legality of the US safeguard measures and if the Dispute Settlement Body rules against the US than a more extensive list is prepared to be hit with additional custom tariffs. A representative of Eurofer states that the exemptions will not be able to fulfill the requests made under any circumstances.