During the seventh meeting of the EU-China strategic dialogue meeting in Beijing on Wednesday 19 April, Chinese State Councillor Yang Jiechi called on High Representative of the EU for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Federica Mogherini for the EU to normalise the treatment given to China in the EU’s anti-dumping investigations.
“About Article 15 [of the protocol for China’s accession to the WTO], the EU said it attaches importance to China’s concern, will abide by the WTO rules and has started the process to amend laws”, Yang told press after the meeting.
“China expects the EU to fulfil the provisions as soon as possible and send a positive signal of protecting a free and open trade system”, he added.
Certain arrangements of the protocol on China’s accession to the WTO that would enable other WTO member countries to treat China as a non-market economy in their anti-dumping calculation methods (and thus impose higher anti-dumping duties) expired on 11 December 2016.
After these arrangements expired, China appealed to the WTO against the so-called ‘substitution country’ method used by the EU for calculating the anti-dumping duties to be applied to Chinese exports (see EUROPE 11687) and in early April it obtained the constitution of a dispute settlement body (DSB) panel of experts to judge its complaint (see EUROPE 11761).
For the EU's part, the Commission proposed new methodology in November 2016 for the anti-dumping calculation so as to settle the issue of how China was treated in the EU’s anti-dumping investigations once the arrangements expired in the protocol on China’s accession to the WTO (see EUROPE 11664). This proposal must now be examined by the EU Council and the European Parliament. (Original version in French by Emmanuel Hagry)