Following the announcement on 10 May of the collapse of Europe's largest solar panel manufacturer, German company SolarWorld, which was a victim of fierce Chinese competition, the alliance of European manufacturing associations, Aegis Europe, urged the EU on Monday 15 May to strengthen its trade defence arsenal.
According to Aegis Europe, the flag-bearer of nearly 30 European manufacturing associations representing various sectors (from traditional industries to renewable ones), "Chinese overcapacities and China’s massive penetration into the EU market have resulted in many hundreds of European companies filing for bankruptcy and insolvency in recent years. Unfortunately, China’s dumping activity has been insufficiently sanctioned in Europe."
"Under-priced Chinese products, sold at below the cost of production, are regularly dumped en masse into the European market across multiple sectors. The EU’s trade defence measures are not strong enough to correct unfair competition. SolarWorld’s insolvency is an alarm bell for other European manufacturing sectors, which are fighting for their very existence,” Aegis Europe states.
The EU must now choose to address these gaps by strengthening our trade defences. The European institutions still have time to act and defend European manufacturers against further state-driven dumping strategies. This is time critical as the European Parliament is currently reviewing the Commission’s proposal on the new anti-dumping methodology. How many more European companies have to fall prey to massive Chinese dumping and over-capacity?” the association concludes.
The EU is currently carrying out separate inter-institutional examinations of two legislative texts that aim to strengthen its trade defence arsenal: - the draft of a new anti-dumping and anti-subsidy regulation proposed by the Commission in April 2013, on which inter-institutional discussions have been taking place in trialogue between the Council and the European Parliament since March (see EUROPE 11751) following on a fragile agreement reached at the Council at the end of 2016; - and the draft for new methodology for the anti-dumping calculation to settle the issue of how to treat China in the EU's anti-dumping investigations now the arrangements on this have expired in China's WTO accession protocol (see EUROPE 11780). The Council has reached it position on this second text and is preparing to negotiate with the European Parliament (see EUROPE 11786). (Original version in French by Emmanuel Hagry)