The European Commission unveiled quotas under the new system to limit duty-free steel imports into the EU, in a move designed \u200cto protect the bloc\u2019s steel sector and increase its capacity utilization.<\/p>\n
Under the new rules, the European Union\u2019s annual tariff-free import quotas are slashed by 47% to 18.3 million metric tons, while an out-of-quota duty of 50% is introduced for 26 categories of steel products imported into the EU.<\/p>\n
The rules, which come into effect on Wednesday, seek to increase steel capacity utilization in the bloc to 80%, the Commission said.<\/p>\n
European steel association Eurofer, however, said the change in rules may only raise capacity utilization to 73%-75%, up from around 67% now, given slow demand.<\/p>\n
EU steelmakers are likely to claw back some 15 million metric tons of production, Axel Eggert, Eurofer\u2019s director general said, about half of what has been lost over the past few years.<\/p>\n
Half of the import quotas have been reserved exclusively for free-trade agreement (FTA) partners, with the other half available to all trading partners, including those with an FTA.<\/p>\n
Many of those partners will receive country-specific quotas proportionate to their historic volumes, the Commission added.<\/p>\n
\u201cMost of the EU\u2019s FTA partners will therefore see a market access reduction significantly lower than the average reduction of 47% foreseen by the Steel Regulation,\u201d it said.<\/p>\n
A \u201csignificant number\u201d of partners have provisionally agreed with these allocations, the Commission said.<\/p>\n
The Commission said the rules were needed to protect the European steel industry from overcapacity elsewhere in the world and dumping practices.<\/p>\n
\u201cPersistent global overcapacity in the steel sector remains a serious global problem and continues to distort international markets,\u201d it said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe measure restores fair competition in a market affected by distortions linked to overcapacity,\u201d it added.<\/p>\n
To have a more significant effect on the steel industry, the measure may need to be extended to downstream sectors, such as companies laminating steel or stamping sheets out for cars, Eggert at Eurofer said.<\/p>\n
(By Bart Meijer, Phil Blenkinsop, Inti Landauro and Hugo Lhomedet; Editing by Sudip Kar-Gupta and Susan Fenton)<\/p>\n
Disclaimer:\u00a0The views expressed in this article are those of the author and may not reflect those of Kitco Metals Inc. The author has made every effort to ensure accuracy of information provided; however, neither Kitco Metals Inc. nor the author can guarantee such accuracy. This article is strictly for informational purposes only. It is not a solicitation to make any exchange in commodities, securities or other financial instruments. Kitco Metals Inc. and the author of this article do not accept culpability for losses and\/ or damages arising from the use of this publication.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The European Commission unveiled quotas under the new system to limit duty-free steel imports into the EU, in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":83232,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[1514,1503,1507,1509,1502,1512,1505,1504,39,40,1506,687,1493,1513,6,1492,1515,1499,1516,1501,1496,1497,1495,1498,46,1500,1511,1517,1494,1510,1508],"class_list":["post-83231","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-eu","tag-bank-forecasts","tag-bitcoin-news","tag-central-banks","tag-charts","tag-crypto-news","tag-currency","tag-economic-reports","tag-ethereum-news","tag-eu","tag-european-union","tag-forecasts","tag-global-economy","tag-gold","tag-international-policy","tag-interviews","tag-kitco-news","tag-market-nugget","tag-metals","tag-mining-minutes","tag-mining-news","tag-palladium","tag-pgm","tag-platinum","tag-platinum-group-metals","tag-politics","tag-precious-metals","tag-rare-earth-metals","tag-roundups","tag-silver","tag-tech-metals","tag-us-dollar"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83231","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=83231"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83231\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/83232"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=83231"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=83231"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=83231"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}