The European Confederation of Iron and Steel Industries (EUROFER) has expressed its indignation that the European Commission has decided not to propose provisional anti-dumping (AD) measures against imports of stainless steel cold rolled products from China, Taiwan and South Korea, but to continue its investigation up to the final stage of the procedure.
Under its investigation, the Commission has found that the European steel industry has suffered - one of the criteria for imposing AD duties - however it could not see evidence that steel imports from China, South Korea or Taiwan were the cause.
Concerning the issue, Gordon Moffat, Director General of EUROFER said, "We are disappointed that no action is being taken now as we know that all elements for imposing measures at the provisional stage are clearly present: massive dumped imports having pushed our industry into losses followed by a renewal of import surges since the second quarter of this year threatening to cause further injury."
Moffat also pointed out that imports from the exporting countries concerned increased by 460 percent from 2005 to 2007 and this surge of imports undercutting the EU prices led to the Community industry losing sales, market share and suffering falling prices and plummeting profits which went into losses in 2007. "Only import surges of this dimension could have triggered such a disruption in the Community market," he added.
In view of this, EUROFER officials are encouraged by the decision to continue the investigation. The confederation thinks this gives them the opportunity to further deepen the analysis by the Commission and they are convinced that this will result in the imposition of final measures.
The decision regarding preliminary findings in the case will be announced by the end of October.