The French government has been lobbying the European Commission to shorten the time taken to complete and implement anti-dumping measures. This was revealed by the French minister of economy Emmanuel Macron during a visit to French company Saint-Gobain in Northern France last week.

Macron told employees that he keeps lobbying for the European commission to “… reduce” the time frame of European anti-dumping (AD) measures, Kallanish learns from a union source.

The French government that has been actively pushing for safeguard duties on Chinese material together with major European steel producers and has succeeded in reducing the bureaucratic European process by one month, Macron said. However, if the EU time frame “… remains at 8 months I have some companies that will go bankrupt next year,” he warned. The time taken for a trade defence application is currently 9 months.

In an effort to solve the problem of the lengthy EU AD bureaucracy, Macron has been promoting the adoption of provisional duties. These would be implemented for the 9-month period of the EU dumping investigation, as previously reported. In January the minister met major local steel producers and associations at a round table discussion held at the French parliament, Assemblée Nationale, to tackle the Chinese dumping issues.

On that occasion Macron also proposed that the Italian, German and UK governments prepare a joint letter to the EU asking for the right to impose provisional measures before full AD duties are applied (see Kallanish 14 January). The provisional duty measures however have not yet been applied.

“The European steel industry expects duties on Chinese material to be applied retroactively over the coming months. Even if the EU bureaucracy is very slow, there has been a very strong AD communication campaign that resulted in discouraging buyers from purchasing Chinese material. Much less Chinese material is ordered or has reached European ports over the past month. There is interest in Chinese material but fear that AD may be applied soon,” a trading source discloses.

Some Chinese mills are asking buyers to cover the cost of AD duties if they are applied before the material is delivered between 2 or 3 months from the order signature, Kallanish learns.