Brussels, 18/04/2001 (Agence Europe) - The European Confederation of Iron and Steel Industries, EUROFER, raised its voice on Tuesday in criticism of the intense pressure being exerted by part of the the US domestic steel industry and members of Congress on the US Administration to take protectionist measures to limit access to the US market still further. EUROFER declares in a press release that restrictions will be detrimental to US consumers and will destabilise the world market. It considers, moreover, that conditions for applying safeguard measures set out by the WTO (World Trade Organisation) are not met. It stresses that: 1) at the present time there is no crisis affecting the entire steel sector in the US but only part of the industry, mainly the integrated producers due to the lack of restructuring, consolidation and modernisation; 2) the reason given for the request for additional protectionist measures is imports from third countries, but this is simply a pretext as steel imports into the US market have been falling since August 2000 and are now below the 1997 level.