Strasbourg, 23/10/2007 (Agence Europe) - Ahead of the public presentation on 20 November 2007 of his review of the rules governing the EU's use of trade defence instruments, EU Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson held a policy debate in Strasbourg on Tuesday 23 October with the other members of the College of Commissioners, based on the outcome of the public consultation exercise on the December 2006 Green Paper (see EUROPE 9427). The EU's trade defence toolbox includes anti-dumping measures, anti-subsidy measures and safeguard mechanisms to protect European producers against unfair trade practices and sudden massive shifts in trade. Sources close to Peter Mandelson say that after a heated debate, the College broadly supported the Trade Commissioner's approach although the source recognised that some of the Commissioners were more nuanced on certain issues, calling for example for protection of European producers located within the EU. This is an important area of caution because the review of the EU's trade defence instruments will necessarily require a revised definition of the Community interest, a key criterion for the Commission in deciding whether to launch trade dumping investigations. The full weight of the nuance can be understood when one realises that Peter Mandelson is recommending extending the idea of European industry to also protect the interests of European producers whose business is located outside the EU.
The Commission has repeated umpteen times that the idea behind the review is not to weaken the trade defence instruments but rather to adapt them to meet the new demands of a globalised world in a state of flux. It believes that the impact of globalisation on companies' chains of production has radically altered the situation since the last updating of the trade defence instruments, which took place in 1994. Moreover, EU enlargement has made it more difficult to strike agreement at the Council, as has been seen with the recent Chinese dossiers (shoes and light-bulbs), where producing countries were trying to defend their jobs and industry tooth and nail from unfair competition, whereas importing countries, which had relocated their business outside the EU, wanted to facilitate imports to the benefit of consumers. The Commission wants to have the EU's trade defence instruments better incorporated in the new climate policy and is using this argument to call for a limited extension of countervailing anti-dumping duty on imports of low-energy lightbulbs originating in China.
For more than a year now, various EU industry associations and manufacturing countries in the EU (particularly Mediterranean countries) have suspected Peter Mandelson of wanting to remove the teeth from the EU's anti-dumping policy. The Commission, however, repeats ad infinitum that there will not be a revolution in the trade defence measures. The review of the measures may be based on four objectives: 1) re-defining the Community interest with the aim of taking account of a wider range of interests and giving greater weight to importers, consumers and trade unions while avoiding penalising EU companies which have relocated production sites to outside the EU; 2) making more frequent recourse to anti-subsidy measures to combat the state aid enjoyed by exporters from outside the EU; 3) beefing up the measures available to the EU27 to ensure anti-dumping measures are properly applied and are not wriggled out of by exporters from outside the EU routing their goods through other countries to avoid playing additional duty; and 4) improving transparency in anti-dumping procedures. (E.H.)