Brussels, 15/05/2013 (Agence Europe) - Some ten years after the ECSC Treaty expired in 2002, Europe is to adopt an action plan to support its struggling steel sector.
On 5 June, Commissioner Antonio Tajani will unveil his highly anticipated action plan for the steel industry. Addressing 400 leaders of the steel sector, meeting in the framework of the European Business Summit on Wednesday 15 May, Tajani stressed the need for an industry strategy which “prevents the decline” of such a “key sector”, which directly employs more than 360,000 people at more than 500 sites across 23 member states. The presentation of the European Commission's action plan will be accompanied on 6 June by an “Industrial Renaissance” industrial policy conference, to take stock of the actions and initiatives already launched and to help determine what further actions can immediately benefit industrial growth in Europe, he explained.
In February of this year, the high-level roundtable on the future of steel in Europe, which was set up in July 2012 and is steered by Commissioners Antonio Tajani (Industry) and Laszlo Andor (Social Affairs), revealed its recommendations for supporting the competitiveness of the steel sector. The promised action plan aims to help a sector which is struggling, in the face both of ferocious global competition - the EU has seen its market share plummet from 22% to 12% whilst China's share soared from 8% to 45% between 2001 and 2011 - and of a net drop in internal demand which has seen European production fall by more than 30% between 2006 and 2009 and which stood in 2012 at just 83% of its 2007 levels, causing overcapacity of between 20% and 25%.
The recommendations call for some 12 actions in the fields of trade, energy and climate, access to raw materials, employment, innovation and R&D (see EUROPE 10784). (EH/transl.fl)