The European Commission opened new antidumping investigations to determine whether Chinese imports of three steel products have been dumped on the EU market.

If that is found to be the case, the Commission will take measures to protect the European industry from damaging effects of unfair trade.

The three steel products subject to these investigations are seamless pipes, heavy plates and hot-rolled flat steel.

In addition, the Commission decided to impose provisional antidumping duties on cold-rolled flat steel imported from China and Russia, following other provisional antidumping measures adopted recently.

“The steel sector currently faces a range of challenges,” said EU Trade Commissioner Cecilia Malmström said. “EU trade defense instruments cannot on their own solve all those problems, but the European Commission is acting and applying the instruments at its disposal to support and ensure a level-playing field. We cannot allow unfair competition from artificially cheap imports to threaten our industry.”

The European Steel Association (EUROFER) has repeatedly accused the Chinese government of interfering in the Chinese steel sector, because it wants to boost the Chinese exports at the expense of the rest of the steel industries around the world.

On February 8, EUROFER announced that the European steel industry will be pressuring the EU not to grant China a Market Economy Status (MES).

In regard with the steel sector, Axel Eggert, Director General of EUROFER, said that currently “dumped steel imports from China, volumes of which have doubled in 18 months, are flooding the EU market and directly causing irreversible closures and job losses across the EU steel sector.”

Eggert explained that, “China has domestic steel overcapacity of around 400 million tons, almost three times the total EU steel demand of 155 million tons. This overcapacity has arisen as a result of persistent state intervention in the Chinese economy.”

The EU now has 37 trade defense measures in place on imports of steel products, while nine investigations are still ongoing.