The General Court of the European Union handed down, on Wednesday 21 December, a judgment in which it dismissed the actions for annulment brought by Grünig KG (Case T-746-20) and EOC Belgium (Case T-747/20) concerning anti-dumping duties on imports of certain polyvinyl alcohol (PVAL) originating in China.
The two companies, which use PVAL to manufacture liquid adhesive, had lodged appeals, arguing that the exemption provided for in the implementing regulation (2020/1336) for imports of PVAL specifically for the manufacture of dry-mix adhesives is discriminatory.
Thus, the judgment first recalls that, where an applicant seeks only the partial annulment of an act, only the implementing measures that this part of the act may contain must be taken into consideration.
However, the judgment points out that “even if the exemption in question were to require the adoption of implementing measures by the national authorities, they could not apply to the applicants, who are not the beneficiaries of the exemption in question”.
On the merits, the General Court also rejected the argument that there was an infringement of Article 9(5) of the Anti-Dumping Regulation (2016/1036), in that the exemption at issue would discriminate against users of PVAL within the EU.
Under this provision, anti-dumping duties are to be set at an appropriate level in each case and imposed in a non-discriminatory manner on imports of a product from all sources found to be dumped and causing injury.
As such, also based on the interpretation of the World Trade Organization (WTO), the Court held that this part of Article 9 of the Anti-Dumping Regulation cannot be interpreted as meaning that the discrimination to which it refers would mean a difference in treatment applicable to users of the product concerned established in the territory of the WTO Member imposing the anti-dumping duties.
Although recognising that the Commission’s State aid decisions are liable to place an economic operator at a competitive disadvantage and that this “could be regarded as directly affecting the legal position of that undertaking”, the General Court concluded that it was “not apparent from the documents in the case-file that the exemption at issue is the cause of de facto discrimination between Chinese exporters of PVAL”.
See the ‘EOC Belgium’ judgment: https://aeur.eu/f/4rc
See the ‘Grünig KG’ judgment: https://aeur.eu/f/4rd (Original version in French by Thomas Mangin)