On Thursday 27 February, the French Minister for Industry and Energy, Marc Ferracci, met his Italian and Spanish counterparts, Adolfo Urso and Jordi Hereu, for a Summit on the future of the European steel industry, at the end of which they co-signed a non-paper listing a series of recommendations.
Belgium, Luxembourg, Romania and Slovakia, who took part in the remote meeting, also supported the document. The signatories welcome the Commission’s announcements in the context of the Clean Industrial Deal, the omnibus packages and the future action plan for the European Steel Industry. However, they want to go even further, and above all faster, to protect the very fragile steel industry.
In their non-paper, the group of Member States calls for the continued use of trade defence tools in the face of Chinese steel overcapacity. European steelmakers need reassurance about the future of the European safeguard measures, which expire in June 2026.
At present, the measures are no longer even adapted to reality, insisted the French minister at a press conference on Thursday. “The thresholds we apply today are too low. There is too much Chinese steel coming into the EU. Then, another issue that we have highlighted is the level of tariffs in the context of safeguarding, which we can also strengthen”.
Another avenue extensively detailed in the declaration is the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM). While the signatories support the initiative, they are keen to improve its effectiveness, and quickly.
Firstly, they want to tackle certain methods of circumventing CBAM.
In order to prevent countries from exporting only their clean steel production to the EU and maintaining high-carbon production for domestic consumption, the signatory countries are proposing to define default emission values according to the country of origin. This would encourage producers to ‘green’ all their production in order to have the lowest possible default values for their country.
From this point of view, the revision of the CBAM cannot wait until 2026, particularly for France, which believes that work should start now in order to have a legislative proposal by the end of 2025.
To see the non-paper: https://aeur.eu/f/fos (Original version in French by Léa Marchal)