Steel safeguards - European Parliament/EU Council negotiations start with similar positions

Officially launched on the evening of Monday 23 February, the interinstitutional negotiations on safeguard measures for European steel need to be concluded as quickly as possible before 30 June, when the current measures expire.

As the European Commission pointed out in a press release, the proposal aims to anticipate the negative effects on the EU steel market of “unsustainable” levels of global overcapacity, which are expected to reach 721 million tonnes by 2027 (around five times the EU’s annual consumption).

The positions of the EU Council and the European Parliament are close and do not deviate drastically from the European Commission’s initial proposal, which provides for a reduction in duty-free import volumes to 18.3 million tonnes per year (i.e. a reduction of 47% compared to the 2024 quotas). Outside of the quotas, customs duties are doubled to 50% (see EUROPE 13725/1).

The proposal also introduces the “melt and pour” principle, meaning that the country of origin will have to be the country where the steel was “melted and poured” to avoid circumvention. While the EU Council supports a “two-step” approach to implementation (with the publication of a possible new legislative proposal), Parliament does not.

It also introduces a ban on all ‘melted and poured’ imports from Russia and Belarus and supports the exemption for “duty free” trade with Ukraine (see EUROPE 13795/4).

The Council of the EU, for its part, wants to carry over unused quotas from one quarter to the next within the same year in order to ensure that the annual quota is used in full and to avoid artificial shortages.

It will also be a question of validating the list of annexed products targeted by the measures, which the Commission does not wish to change from the safeguards currently in force (except possibly as part of a compulsory review every two years). 

The next round of political negotiations will take place on 17 March.