Jun 28, 2023
EC maintains steel safeguard measures until June 30, 2024

The European Commission has kept in place definitive safeguards on certain steel products until June 30, 2024, it said in its Official Journal on June 27.

The decision follows a review to determine whether the measures should be terminated a year early in June 2023.

The EC concluded that “an increase in the volume of imports should the measure be terminated as originally expected, could undermine significantly any meaningful economic recovery and the efforts being made by the Union steel industry in its process of adjustment to a higher level of imports.”

“All tariff-rate quotas of the steel safeguard will continue to be increased (liberalised) by 4% as of 1 July 2023,” the EC said in a statement on its website.

The EC said it did not consider that the current outlooks for the EU’s steel market could justify the early termination of the measure, and that despite a slowdown in EU consumption, notably in the second half of 2022, imports in 2022 were the third-highest in the last decade.

Therefore, despite a reduction in the level of tariff-rate quotas used in a situation of lower consumption, data shows that import pressure increased and remained, in terms of market share, close to the historic highs seen just before the adoption of the safeguard measure in early 2019.

Author Annalisa Villa

Source: Eurometal