The European Commission is looking into a possible circumvention of its anti-dumping measures imposed on European imports of corrosion-resistant steels from China. By publishing its Implementing Regulation on Monday 25 November, the institution therefore warned of its initiating an investigation concerning this possible circumvention and decided to make these imports subject to registration.
The Commission had introduced anti-dumping measures on a set of corrosion-resistant steels in February 2018 (see EUROPE 11957/16).
However, by making minor modifications to the products subject to measures, Chinese exporters would have circumvented the additional duties imposed by the EU - for example, by applying a thin layer of oil, slightly increasing the carbon, aluminium or coating content. This scenario is reminiscent of the sequence of events surrounding Ukrainian poultry imports into the EU, where the concept of product modification seems to be gaining ground here (see other news).
A change sufficient to circumvent the anti-dumping measures and to flood the European market again: significant volumes of imports of the product under investigation appear to have replaced imports of the product concerned, offsetting the remedial effects of the anti-dumping measures.
The Commission has also instructed the customs authorities to take appropriate measures to register these imports.
To read the regulation: https://bit.ly/34pHsiH (Original version in French by Hermine Donceel)