India and the European Union (EU) have failed to reach an agreement on equivalent level of concessions and trade compensation that the bloc could offer to New Delhi to mitigate the adverse effects of the extension of its safeguard duties on certain steel imports from the country, government officials here said on Tuesday, June 18.
EU and India conducted consultations on June 7, on the EU’s recent announcement of its decision to extend the existing safeguard measures on some steel product imports beyond the current termination date of June 30, 2024, for another two years.
This is the second extension of the safeguards that take the form of Tariff Rate Quota (TRQ) and were first imposed in 2018.
Under the TRQ mechanism, every country is issued a quota for the export of 26 steel products to the EU. This quota was fixed at 105% of the average imports between 2015 and 2017 from that country. Any exports beyond this quota attract an extra 25 percent duty.
“India requested the EU to put forth its proposals for maintaining a substantially equivalent level of concessions and other obligations and adequate trade compensation to mitigate the adverse effects of the proposed measure. India and the European Union were not able to reach an agreement,” Indian government said in a statement.
India consequently reserves its rights under the WTO Agreement, including the right to suspend substantially equivalent concessions or other obligations under the Agreement on Safeguards, it added.
