Posted on 25 Jul 2018
German processors of sheet and coil have questioned the justification of new EU safeguard measures, saying they doubt that steel meant for the US market will be diverted to European shores.
So far, the diversion is only an assumption, and it is not the case that growing volumes of steel from Asia or Russia are flooding the European market, cold rollers association Fachvereinigung Kaltwalzwerke (FVK) and sheet formers association Industrieverband Blechumformung (IBU) say in a joint statement. The managing director of IBU, Bernhard Jacobs, has recently held numerous talks with member companies and has found no confirmation of a diversion effect, the statement says.
The associations demand an answer from the European Commission as to why it does not grant protection to steel-using industries, which employ some 15 million people in Europe versus 320,000 employed by the steelmaking industry. “The import quotas cap supply and lead to price increases for domestic steel,” the associations say in the statement seen by Kallanish.
“Current comments on the protective duties in the USA point at the damages for the steel-working industries in the USA, and they are right to do so,” says FVJ managing director Martin Kunkel. “But European policy-makers totally ignore that the same applies to European steel processors.”
