Brussels, 20/07/2001 (Agence Europe) - The day after a negative signal from Washington (see EURROPE of 20 July, p. 7), the Union declared its intention, on Friday, to ask for arbitration within the World Trade Organisation in the dispute it has with the United States over countervailing duties imposed on former European public steel companies and a manufacturer of food pasta. Following the vain attempt at an amicable settlement and several postponements of deadlines, the European Commission will ask, at a forthcoming date that remains to be determined, for the creation of a panel to statute on the legality of the measures maintained by the Americans in over a dozen cases, despite the verdict in Geneva in a similar affair which it will invoke as precedent (Corus/former-British Steel, see EUROPE of 17 and 13 May 2000).
"We note with regret that it has not been possible to find an amicable solution to these cases in suspense as we had hoped", declared the Commission spokesperson. "Despite considerable efforts made, we have no other option but to take the case to the WTO", he added. The multilateral dispute settlement procedure opened this winter with the traditional consultative phase that has just been cut short, despite the one-week breathing space granted to Washington, that the Commission again prolonged for two days, counting, it seems, on the short visit Commissioner Pascal Lamy made to the United States last Tuesday. …/..
This case mainly involves former State steel companies, notably Usinor and GTS from France, Cogne, Terni and Ilva from Italy, the Spanish Aceralia, Dillinger, Salzgitter, EkoStahlwerke Bremen and Thyssen from Germany, the Swedish SSAB, as well as the Italian Delverde for pasta. Many firms sanctioned by the surtax on imports of their products in the United States to have benefited from State subsidies granted before their privatisation. These cases are fundamentally the same than the case of British Steel in which the EU was supported, emphasised Brussels. Also denouncing the new so-called American methodology "property change", which has acted to penalise European firms cited. In reality, this methodology is not compatible with the WTO rules and leads to an increase in compensatory duties on the privatised companies, which do not receive any benefits in return, they also underline, while adding that most of the measure in question nevertheless derive from the former system. The Commission also denounced the fact that the United States have presumed that the private companies have profited from previous subsidies, without even trying to prove it, while the same verdict in the WTO set out that the privatisation of a State company at a fair market price eliminates the benefits of previous subsidies. The Americans would have been able to resolve the problem if they wanted, but they have chosen to keep their munitions dry with regards to the steel industry for the 201 case. This is nearly the same case as with bananas and FSC, the price to pay to avoid resorting to safeguard measures following this procedure launched at the beginning of the month to measure the impact of the rise in imports of foreign steel on American industry, they feel in Brussels.