The European Commission has announced that it has imposed provisional safeguard measures on imports of certain grain-oriented electrical steel (GOES) and steel laminations and cores (SLCs), introducing tariff-rate quotas and price-based safeguard duties for a period of 155 days. The measures will enter into force on September 25, 2026 and will apply until February 26, 2027.
According to the Commission's preliminary findings, increasing imports of the given products and the conditions under which they entered the EU market caused or threatened to cause serious injury to EU producers.
Under the provisional system, the Commission has established separate country-specific and residual quotas for GOES imports, based on average imports over the previous three years.
For GOES, China has been allocated a quota of 30,693.68 mt, followed by Japan with 23,103.61 mt and South Korea with 4,789.93 mt. A further 5,360.39 mt is available to other eligible countries.
Safeguard duties linked to minimum price thresholds
Rather than applying a single percentage-based tariff, the EU has established price thresholds that differ depending on the product and whether imports are within or outside the relevant quota. When the net free-at-EU-frontier price before duty falls below the applicable threshold, the safeguard duty will equal the difference between the two prices. No safeguard duty will be collected when the import price is equal to or above the relevant threshold.
For GOES, in-quota thresholds range between €2,800/mt and €3,400/mt, depending on the TARIC code, while the out-of-quota threshold is €3,500/mt.
For steel laminations, the thresholds are €4,000/mt within the quota and €4,550/mt outside the quota, while those for steel cores stand at €5,000/mt and €5,600/mt, respectively.
For steel cores incorporated into imported transformers, the Commission has adopted a different mechanism. Such imports will not be subject to quotas but will face a provisional safeguard duty of €1,140/mt based on the weight of the core incorporated in the transformer.
EUROFER welcomes decision to protect transformer value chain
The European Steel Association (EUROFER) welcomes the Commission's adoption of provisional safeguard measures on imports of GOES. Axel Eggert, director general of EUROFER, said, “Europe cannot expand and strengthen its electricity grids without maintaining a European supply of Grain-Oriented Electrical Steel. This safeguard strikes the right balance: preserving a viable European GOES production base while keeping the market open to the imports needed by transformer manufacturers.”
