India will get country-specific tariff-rate quotas (TRQs) totaling 1.64 million mt annually for exporting steel products to the European Union (EU), of which 694,853 mt will be under the free trade agreement (FTA) with the EU, an Indian government official said citing from a draft text released by the EU on Monday, September 14.
The total country-specific quota of 1,641,470 mt comprises 946,616 mt under the MFN (most favored nation) component and 694,853 mt under the FTA component, he said.
The quotas cover a wide range of steel products, including non-alloy and alloy hot rolled sheets and strips, cold rolled sheets, metallic-coated sheets, organic-coated sheets, tin mill products, stainless steel products, merchant bars and light sections, rebars, wire rods, pipes and tubes. India at present exports about four million mt of steel per year to the EU.
The TRQs follow the EU's Steel Overcapacity Regulation, which came into force on July 1, 2026, aimed at ensuring protection for the EU's steel industry against the effects of global overcapacity. It sets free-of-duty quotas at 18.3 million mt with a 50 percent duty for out-of-quota imports and a melt-and-pour regime to enhance transparency.
It said that EU would administer the TRQs in a transparent, objective and non-discriminatory manner so as to be conducive to trade and facilitate, to the extent feasible, their effective utilization. This includes making publicly available in a timely and continuous manner all relevant information concerning the administration of the TRQs.
According to the draft EU text, India will also get access to additional quota volumes in categories where India has a country-specific quota. Those additional volumes will be allocated through competition among EU FTA partners that have country-specific quotas in those categories.
For product categories where India does not have a country-specific quota, it will have access to residual quotas, including general residual quotas open to eligible trading partners and preferential quotas reserved for EU FTA partners, the draft said.
