Brussels, 07/05/2002 (Agence Europe) - A week after adopting its fifth report into shipbuilding round the world (see EUROPE of 1 May, p.10), the European Commission approved the rewritten version of a report on Tuesday into trade obstacles in the shipbuilding industry. This is an update of the Commission's previous investigation into the impact of dumping by South Korean shipyards and ways of countering it. It was decided to update the report following the failure of industry ministers to agree on the issue in December 2001 (see EUROPE of 26 April, p.15).
The report will remain under wraps until its has been presented to Member States at the Council's committee on trade obstacles at the end of May, after which it will be submitted to the Industry Council on 6 June. According to close sources, the new version confirms the conclusions of the original report, that European yards are continuing to suffer considerably in the container carrier line and also when it comes to petrochemical tankers as a result of unfair competitive practice on the part of the South Koreans. The same sources obliquely suggest that when it comes to including liquefied natural gas carriers (LNG carriers) in the list of ships eligible for aid, while Korea may be the world leader, no information was currently available that would lead to the conclusion that subsidies existed that caused serious harm to the EU yards. They point out that the information available for LNG carriers dates from 2000 and 2001 and that further enquiries would be required to determine whether a lasting trend would emerge in the longer term.
In its fifth report, the Commission said that the market analysis suggested that South Korean shipyards had been able to get involved in the LNG sector because of the very low offerings, as had happened in the past for some oil tankers and container carriers. They qualified this by saying that the South Korean ability to provide a huge number of ships in very short deadlines might also have been a deciding factor in their winning of a large number of orders.