Brussels, 25/04/2000 (Agence Europe) - The European Commission has closed the investigation into the alleged circumvention of anti-dumping duties on the import of certain magnetic discs originating in Taiwan and China, without extending the duty in force to the import of parts from the same place of origin. It was not possible to establish that these duties were circumvented through the import of microdisk parts from the same place of origin, then assembled in the Community, as claimed by the Committee of European Diskette Manufacturers (Diskma).
For the requirements of the investigation, additional information was gathered from Europa Magnetics Corporation, assembler of microdisks cited by Diskma, as well as its exporter in Taiwan, and other Chinese and Taiwanese producers-exporters. The Commission then verified certain criteria, concluding that they were only partially met and that it was whence impossible to establish the circumvention. In the regulation published in the Official Journal No. L/96 of 18 April, it thus confirms that: i) sales of microdisks assembled by EMC rose sharply immediately after the introduction of the anti-dumping duties (270% between 1994 and 1999), together with a meteoritic rise in its market share in the Community (+420% for the same period); ii) parts originating in Taiwan represented "well over" 60% of the total value of the parts of the assembled products, 60% being the minimum percentage to meet the second criteria of circumvention. But the added value of the parts being higher than 25% of the manufacturing costs, another compulsory criteria was not met. The Commission did not therefore consider the assembly operation as circumventing measures taken in 1993, consequently refraining from extending these to parts imported by ECM.