The European Commission had until Monday 16 January to bring its 2018 steel safeguard measure into line with a World Trade Organization (WTO) report (see EUROPE 12985/21, 12942/10). This has now been done since 13 January, when it published an amendment to the implementing regulation that introduced the measure.
However, the measure has been neither modified nor deleted. With an additional annex providing more data on the baseline investigation and the justifications for the imposition of a measure, the EU believes it is responding to the WTO.
The Geneva-based organisation had invalidated the following EU justifications for imposing its safeguard measure: - the fact that the increase in steel imports had resulted from “unforeseen developments”; - the fact that there was “a threat of serious injury” to the European industry.
Despite the request of several “interested parties” in recent months to terminate the safeguard measure, the Commission noted that “it has the right to implement the measure and bring it into conformity with the rules in those few aspects that the Panel found to be inconsistent with them”.
The WTO panel did not require the EU to end the steel safeguard measure.
See the implementing regulation: https://aeur.eu/f/4wq (Original version in French by Léa Marchal)