Brussels, 21/01/2002 (Agence Europe) - The Union has asked the World Trade Organisation (WTO) to approve sanctions against the United States for failure to comply with the conclusions of the arbitration condemning its 1916 anti-dumping and anti-trust legislation. Washington immediately responded by calling for a panel to be set up to verify the legitimacy of the European request, as well as that of Japan, which both target the imposition of similar measures in the anti-dumping arsenal on the other side of the Atlantic. Result: the Bush Administration, which had secured a period of grace up to end-2001 to convince Congress to review its copy, may play the game of prolongation for a period of maximum two further months.. A reprieve all the more precious in that this case is not void of ramifications in the steel sector over which the American threat of a 20 to 40% surtax on European deliveries is hanging, threat that could take effect in March.
The European approach is of a purely legal nature, sources in Brussels tell us. "The request had to be introduced within the regulatory period so as to preserve our rights and be able to exercise them, should the need arise", said a European Commission spokesperson. The most credible scenario is that "we shall not have to use it as the United States is committed to doing whatever is necessary" to respect its obligations to the WTO, he added. The American Administration said last July that the amending procedure had already begun, which enabled it to secure a five month reprieve from Brussels. The period of grace ended on 31 December (see EUROPE of 27 July 2001), without progress being made in Congress. The draft law repealing the one of 1916 that was handed to it contains one key provision allowing for the declassification of ongoing cases before the American courts. Should they survive legislative scrutiny, these few lines integrated in the text will have a defining impact on a possible conclusion to this potentially harmful dispute for American trade and for the atmosphere of transatlantic trade, already darkened by the threat of unprecedented European sanctions in the affair of American tax relief on exports and the American threat of imposing prohibitive duties on steel imports, without mentioning other conflicts gestating (GMOs, copyright, aid to aircraft manufacturers). The fact is that a certain number of European companies are concerned by the ongoing affairs. As although the United States' anti-dumping code - which provides for criminal and civil penalties that may go as far as imprisonment - has not been implemented for a long time, it has been invoked, among other things, by the lawyers of the American firm Geneva Steel in the framework of a case against a subsidiary of the German group Thyssen, before a court in the state of Utah.