The European Steel Association (EUROFER) has released a joint letter with trade union IndustriAll Europe to Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, and Stéphane Séjourné, the commission’s executive vice-president for prosperity and industrial strategy, calling for an urgent meeting under the name ‘European Steel Summit’ with them both to discuss urgent solutions and the EU Steel Action Plan at the beginning of next year.
According to the letter, the European steel industry is facing a crisis, with thousands of job cuts being recently announced, and billions of euros for decarbonization plans currently being halted. Stating that the EU steel industry was already suffering from the ongoing energy and raw material crises, the letter said that the EU market is once again being flooded by cheap foreign steel. A combination of around 100 million mt of Chinese steel flooding major markets at dumped prices and a record-high global steel excess capacity of 560 million mt is evaluated as being catastrophic for the EU steel industry. The letter stated, “The issue is bigger than only China, with other steel producing regions of the world, such as South Asia, the Middle East, India, and Japan, rerouting to the EU, depressing global steel prices, and endangering the survival of our sector and investments in the green transition.”
Noting that the current EU trade defense instruments are insufficient to tackle the spill-over of global steel overcapacity, the letter calls on European officials to implement short-term emergency measures and a new comprehensive EU trade initiative as a matter of urgency to tackle a double crisis.
According to the letter, the summit would allow the leaders of industriAll Europe and EUROFER leaders and CEOs of EU steel companies the opportunity to provide the European Commission with a detailed update on the situation of the EU steel industry and to exchange views on recommendations contained in the Steel Action Plan.