The European Commission's latest annual report on anti-dumping, anti-subsidy and safeguard activities, published on Tuesday 31 July, states that the European Union's activity on trade defence was intense in 2017, both on the level of investigations – new (greatly up as regards re-assessments of anti-dumping measures) and ongoing – and on the legislative level, with the adoption of new methodology for the anti-dumping calculation and an inter-institutional agreement on modernising trade defence instruments.
At the end of 2017, the EU imposed 97 definitive anti-dumping measures (extended in 29 cases) and 13 compensatory measures (extended in 3 cases) against imported products, which were greatly up (4%) compared with 2016. A 0.31% share of the EU's total imports was subject to anti-dumping and anti-subsidy measures, showing that the EU remains an open market, the Commission says.
Investigations work was maintained at a high level, close to that of 2016, with 11 new investigations launched (including five in the chemicals industry and related sectors) and a growing number (up 75% compared with 2016) of 'expiry review' investigations, opened to determine if existing measures should be renewed.
At the end of 2017, 46 investigations were ongoing, to which 4 refund investigations were added covering 61 separate refund claims.
Although incomplete in terms of data, the expiry investigations show, in many cases, that the imposition of measures lead to a considerable fall in imports of the product concerned, the Commission states.
As in previous years, the EU did not open any new safeguard investigation and did not establish any safeguard measure.
2017 is also noteworthy in terms of legislative activity, with the introduction of new methodology for calculating anti-dumping taxes for countries where serious market distortions occur (see EUROPE 11918). This entered into force on 20 December 2017.
This new methodology was accompanied by the publication of a first country report on market distortions resulting from considerable state interference. This report was on China, which is targeted by the main share of the EU's anti-dumping activity. The next country report will be on Russia.
In addition, 2017 paved the way for the modernisation of EU trade defence instruments, the new rules for which entered into force on 8 June (see EUROPE 12036).
This new set of rules, which is the fruit of a long process of interinstitutional talks that began in 2013 and that was slowed down by a blockage in discussions between the member states, includes among its main advances, the acceleration of investigations, a better application of the lesser duty rule, increased transparency thanks to the prior disclosure of provisional measures and the recognition of the role of unions.
These changes constitute a major overhaul of the EU's trade defence policy since 1995, which has equipped the bloc "with sufficiently robust trade defence instruments to deal with distortions in the global economy", the Commission concludes. (Original version in French by Emmanuel Hagry)