The European Commission (EC) has announced that it has amended tthe regulation regarding the safeguard measures which have been in place since 2018, correcting inconsistencies in measures and modifying them in line with World Trade Organization (WTO) rules. Despite the additions in the regulation, no changes were made in the measures themselves.
The commission added an annex to the regulation, which includes the data the commission had considered when making the original decision but which were not spelled out in the definitive regulation. Accordingly, the EU market was attractive for exporting producers in terms of both volumes and prices, confirmed by the fact that, while the main steel exporting countries China, India, Russia, South Korea, Taiwan, Turkey and Ukraine, which represented around 75 percent of total imports into the EU in 2018, were reducing exports to third countries, they were increasing their exports to the EU at a fast pace.
According to the panel established by WTO in 2020, the EC had failed to show that steel imports had increased because of unforeseen developments and the EC’s determination of a threat of serious injury were not based on facts, as SteelOrbis previously reported.