Reacting to the unilateral introduction of customs duty on imports to the United States of steel and aluminium as decided by the US President, Donald Trump, but from which the EU is being temporarily exempted, the EU heads of state confirmed their unity and strong line vis-à-vis Mr Trump at the European Summit on Friday 23 March, being open to dialogue to solve trade frictions while demanding that the exemption for the EU from the US import duty be permanent and cover the whole of the EU.
The president of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, welcomed this EU28 unity, which was a factor in the US decision to allow a temporary exemption for the EU. Juncker said the US recognises that the EU is a unit and cannot be divided, which is good news.
Juncker said that the bad news was that the United States is calling for talks to settle the question by 1 May, which is not very realistic given the size of the issues to be settled. He said the EU was calling for a permanent (rather than temporary) exemption.
The French president, Emmanuel Macron, said that in theory one wouldn’t talk about anything while there’s a gun at one’s head. The Austrian chancellor, Sebastian Kurz, said that naturally the EU was in dialogue with the US, but it was not in the EU's interest to be blackmailed.
In the conclusions document, the European Summit regrets the US decision to levy customs duty on imports of steel and aluminium: ‘These measures cannot be justified on the grounds of national security, and the sector-wide protection in the US is an inappropriate remedy for the real problems of overcapacity, on which the EU already has offered the US its full cooperation.’ Noting the temporary exemption for the EU from this import duty, the European Summit calls for it to be made ‘permanent’ and stated its ‘full support’ for countermeasures prepared by the European Commission ‘to respond to the US measures as appropriate and in a proportionate manner’ while respecting WTO rules.
Finally, the conclusions document notes: ‘The European Council recalls its commitment to strong transatlantic relations as a cornerstone of the security and prosperity of both the US and the EU, and underlines its support for a dialogue on trade issues of common concern.’
Macron hailed the ‘European sovereignty’ asserted by the summit, noting that the EU was not seeking a trade war, but rather dialogue, adding that it would act within the WTO’s rule and had to be united and ready to act without any weakness. He described the US decision as a bad strategy for responding to a problem of trade dumping and overcapacity.
The German chancellor, Angela Merkel, said the exemption was temporary but they wanted to avoid a spiral that would lead to loss of free-trade.
‘We were discussing this morning the need that we want to ensure that does become a permanent exemption for the European Union and I stayed on to be part of that discussion because the steel industry is important to the United Kingdom and I want to ensure that the UK steel industry and its workers are safeguarded,’ commented the British PM, Theresa May.
Addressing their peers, Macron and the Dutch PM, Mark Rutte, said the EU, if in dialog with the US, must not enter into a TTIP-type negotiation mode in which Trump would try to get the EU to make concessions, explained a diplomat.
Using TTIP talks to make progress in talks with Washington ‘would be the wrong path to take’ said Kurz.
More broadly, the European Summit affirmed the EU's commitment to a rules-based open, multilateral trade system focussed on the WTO.
Europe’s leaders backed an open EU trade policy, calling for free-trade talks with Mercosur and Mexico to continue and a robust stance against unfair trade, urging the co-legislators to continue to move forward on an EU mechanism for filtering foreign investment and a reciprocal mechanism for access to public procurement markets in non-EU countries.
Finally, the politicians called on the European Commission to examine how to ensure proper implementation of free-trade deals and commitments made by third countries. (Original version in French by Emmanuel Hagry and the editorial team)