Anti-dumping case set to break new ground

Date: 13/07/2000

By Peter Chapman

EUROPEAN Commission trade chief Pascal Lamy is close to ending years of anti-dumping duties on a key industrial product with a ground-breaking ruling that continuing the retaliatory measures would do EU industry more harm than good, according to industry sources.

Trade experts say if Lamy decides to propose abolishing the levies, it will be the first time the Commission has called for existing duties to be scrapped because they are not in the 'Community interest' even though it has found new evidence of dumping and injury to a European firm.

Officials stress that the case - which relates to imports of ferrous silicon, a material used widely in the steel industry - is still under discussion and that no final decision has yet been made. Any proposal from Lamy to end the levies would also have to be approved by member states' anti-dumping experts. "We have to do some more work on this case and the timing has not yet been decided," said an aide to the Commissioner.

But industry insiders claim an early draft of Lamy's proposal calls for an end to the measures and they believe that he will recommend dropping duties on imports of the product from Russia, Khazakstan, the Ukraine and China on 'Community interest' grounds. They also predict that duties on imports from Brazil and Venezuela will be dropped because there is no evidence that dumping is set to continue.

Industry sources say Lamy is likely to argue that the measures, which were imposed almost 20 years ago, should be abolished because they would add to the steel industry's costs and continuing to impose the duties would only benefit a single Norwegian company.

The firm concerned is covered by the anti-dumping rules because Norway is a member of the European Economic area, but its share of the world market has risen by 13% since the duties were introduced while other companies' share has fallen by an equivalent amount. "The Commission could conclude that this has lasted long enough and that the cost of all this is disproportionate to the burden that it inflicts on the steel industry," said one expert.

"A lot of people have been asking for this for a long time. They are hoping

that it will set a precedent for the future," said a Brussels-based lawyer, who added

that although the Community interest argument had been used before in deciding against imposing new levies, this would be the first time it had been invoked to justify abolishing duties already in place. "It would be revolutionary," he said.

He added that abandoning the duties would also be further evidence that Lamy is not the trade protectionist many feared he would be before he took charge of the dossier last year. "It is ironic that Lamy would be carrying out the policies which we expected of his predecessor Sir Leon Brittan," he said.

European Commission trade chief Pascal Lamy is close to ending years of anti-dumping duties on a key industrial product with a ground-breaking ruling that continuing the retaliatory measures would do EU industry more harm than good, according to industry sources.