PRESS RELEASE: AEGIS Europe stands with the European Parliament on new EU Anti-Dumping rules

Brussels, 11 September 2017 – The European Commission and European Parliament are holding a planned meeting on the EU’s new trade defence regime tomorrow (12 September). Ahead of this engagement, AEGIS Europe has applauded the stance taken by the Parliament on ensuring that Europe has sufficiently strong, and legally robust, trade defences in place to counter dumping into the EU.

In recent years, Europe has been flooded by cheap, dumped products sold below the cost of production. This has undermined the competitiveness of European industry and resulted in the loss of hundreds of thousands of jobs across the Union.

“AEGIS Europe is aligned with the European Parliament”, said Ines van Lierde, Chair of AEGIS Europe. “European manufacturers share the Parliament’s concern that the Commission’s proposed Anti-Dumping methodology would not be sufficiently robust. Not only would it fail to actually address the threat of dumped imports from countries with significant distortions, the lack of robustness could well invite a myriad of unwarranted challenges at the European Court of justice.”

“The additional burden of proof requirements weigh too heavily on the Commission. It does not have the necessary resources, capacity and access to the evidence necessary to prove two levels of distortion. These are: the ‘detailed cost’ distortions and the ‘horizontal systemic’ distortions in any given country outside the EU. The Commission’s proposal creates a substantial risk for EU industry, which could end up with no effective trade defences at all”, warned van Lierde.

AEGIS Europe believes that the basic legal principles that underpin the amendments put forward by the Parliament are logically coherent and consistent with WTO rules. If it were to be proven that significant distortions exist within a given country, then the onus should naturally shift onto individual exporting companies to show that their prices are not distorted if they want this to be taken into account in the determination of dumping.

“Whole industries across Europe, which have already been weakened by dumping from countries that have no respect for international trade rules, could be wiped out if the Parliament were to succumb to the Commission’s pressure to adopt its Anti-Dumping proposal. We applaud the Parliament for standing firm and continuing to defend European industry and jobs,” van Lierde concluded.

Contact: Natalia Kurop m: +32 (0) 488 945 579 | email: info@aegiseurope.eu | http://www.aegiseurope.eu