By Philip Blenkinsop<\/p>\n
BRUSSELS, June 18 (Reuters) – European Union leaders are debating on Thursday possible new and tougher measures to curb the bloc’s growing trade deficit with China and its heavy reliance on the world’s second-largest economy for rare earths and other critical supplies.<\/p>\n
These \u200care the current set of EU trade measures as well as possible future tools.<\/p>\n
ANTI-DUMPING\/ANTI-SUBSIDY DUTIES<\/p>\n
The European Commission can impose additional duties on companies \u200coperating in foreign countries if it determines they are selling into the EU at artificially low prices, such as below cost, or are benefiting from unfair subsidies. In exceptional cases, it can \u200baccept minimum price undertakings. The investigations typically last just over a year, but including preparatory work this means there is generally a two- to three-year gap between a problem being identified and a solution found. Critics say this is too long for struggling domestic EU industries.<\/p>\n
At the end of 2025, the EU had 172 anti-dumping and anti-subsidy measures in place, just over three-quarters of them targeting Chinese companies. This includes additional duties of up to 35.3% on Chinese-built electric vehicles.<\/p>\n
SAFEGUARDS<\/p>\n
The Commission can \u200crespond to surges of imports with safeguards for an \u2060entire sector, such as steel products at present. They typically take the form of duty-free quotas and tariffs on volumes beyond the quotas. Initial measures can be put in place in four to five months.<\/p>\n
However, they are designed to be temporary, \u2060lasting up to a maximum of eight years under global trade rules, with a steady increase in the quotas over time. The EU is set to extend beyond that eight-year limit for steel from July, but this has required difficult negotiations with steel-exporting nations.<\/p>\n
Safeguards are a blunt instrument, targeting all importers, including those from countries with which \u200bthe \u200bEU has free trade agreements. The EU has only used safeguards twice.<\/p>\n
ANTI-COERCION INSTRUMENT<\/p>\n
Dubbed the \u200bEU’s “trade bazooka”, the ACI was approved in 2023, has never \u200cbeen deployed and is meant as a deterrent. It allows the EU to retaliate against third countries that put economic pressure on EU members to force a policy shift and sets out 10 possible courses of action.<\/p>\n
These include curbs on imports or exports, restrictions to public tenders, measures to curb services trade and investment and restrictions on the protection of intellectual property rights.<\/p>\n
INTERNATIONAL PROCUREMENT INSTRUMENT<\/p>\n
Among new instruments, the IPI can exclude from EU public tenders bidders from other countries if those countries do not offer EU firms reciprocal access to their markets. Alternatively, the EU can attach a penalty score to their bids. The EU has \u200conly used this once so far, barring Chinese medical device suppliers from participating in EU \u200bpublic tenders after concluding that China clearly favoured Chinese devices for its hospitals.<\/p>\n
FOREIGN SUBSIDIES REGULATION<\/p>\n
While \u200bnot strictly a trade measure, the European Commission can intervene if \u200bit finds that a foreign company has unfairly benefited from subsidies from outside the EU in acquisitions or public procurement. The \u200cmeasure has been extensively used, most recently forcing a consortium \u200bbuilding a new Lisbon subway line to \u200bchoose a Polish company instead of a Chinese firm.<\/p>\n
POSSIBLE NEW MEASURES<\/p>\n
Many EU countries want the Commission to speed up its trade investigations and prioritise key cases.<\/p>\n
Some favour a wider product scope of such investigations and a more flexible approach to safeguards, taking into account close EU trading \u200bpartners or deploying a safeguard while a longer anti-dumping \u200cor anti-subsidy investigation continues.<\/p>\n
The Commission itself has floated an idea to require EU companies in sensitive sectors to find three supply sources, \u200brather than relying on one. A French-led paper last month suggested possible additional duties and quotas to guard against over-reliance on a single foreign \u200bcountry and to protect European producers.<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Philip Blenkinsop; Editing by Nia Williams)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Philip Blenkinsop BRUSSELS, June 18 (Reuters) – European Union leaders are debating on Thursday possible new and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":73292,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[12622,39,12688,40325,256,40,28600,667,40323,40324],"class_list":["post-73291","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-eu","tag-chinese-companies","tag-eu","tag-eu-members","tag-eu-trade-measures","tag-european-commission","tag-european-union","tag-free-trade-agreements","tag-the-commission","tag-trade-deficit-with-china","tag-trade-measure"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73291","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=73291"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73291\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/73292"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=73291"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=73291"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=73291"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}