The European Steel Association (EUROFER) has said that the EU steel safeguard has been automatically raised by five percent despite steel industry protests and the expressed concerns of a number of EU member states. This significant rise in the size of the import quota, the second this year, is happening even as steel demand in the EU is expected to fall in 2019, EUROFER noted.
EUROFER pointed out the fact that this increase in quota came while there is an ongoing review that should take into account the changed market situation, adding that the Commission has ignored the industry’s legitimate concerns about increasing the quota in a falling market.
EUROFER warned that the Commission will bear a large degree of responsibility towards steel industry workers put at risk as the sector shrinks unnecessarily - despite firm warnings by producer companies and member states. EUROFER has made a series of recommendations designed to improve the functioning of the safeguard itself. These include more comprehensive country-specific quotas, caps on the consumption of the residual quota by individual countries, and the automatic inclusion in the measure of developing countries that exceed the three percent threshold.
“We call on the Commission to heed our call and those of member states that have already expressed concerns about the rise - and to respond by undoing this out-of-step expansion before it further undermines the safeguard and the sector that relies upon it”, Axel Eggert, director general of EUROFER, said.