PRESS RELEASE: EU Industry, Trade Associations, and EU Institutions representatives co-signed a letter on MES China, which has been sent today to EU Commissioners

Brussels, Thursday 27 October 2016 - AEGIS Europe, Committee of Regions, IndustriAll,  European Trade Union, the European Trade Union Confederation, the Workers' Group and Employers' Group of the European Economic and Social Committee, and 33 Members of the European Parliament today sent a letter calling on the European Commission to effectively defend EU producers against unfairly dumped Chinese exports.

The letter called on the Commission to include the following elements in its forthcoming legislative proposal on Trade Defence modernisation:

A clear link between the trigger of the new 'non-standard' anti-dumping methodology and the EU's five market economy criteria: the use of Chinese prices and costs as a basis for calculating dumping should depend on China's and Chinese producers' complete fulfilment of the EU's five criteria as established by EU law and practice
Non-reversal of the burden of proof: it should remain up to China and Chinese exporters to prove that they operate under normal market economy conditions
Non-discrimination between economic sectors: the new methodology should be actionable equally by all industrial sectors and EU producers affected by injurious dumping. 

You can read the full letter here.

AEGIS Europe sent a letter to EU leaders on 19 October, the eve of the European Council meeting. The letter put a spotlight on the risks associated with the EU's new anti-dumping methodology, which could make it much more difficult for EU producers, and particularly for SMEs, to effectively defend themselves against Chinese illegitimate dumping against which no market economy producer can compete.

You can read the full letter here.

In parallel, on 14 October, representatives of industry and employers' federations from Austria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovakia and Slovenia published a joint declaration of the Central and Eastern European industry and employers. The Declaration called on governments to insist that the level of protection of our future legal framework to act against dumping be maintained and strengthened (with regard to the China MES question and the general Trade Defence Instruments modernisation).

Read the full declaration here.