The EU announced that it would impose anti-dumping duties on imports of cold rolled steel from Russia. The EU Commission representatives explained these measures as necessary to protect trading interests of European steelmakers in the situation of global steel overcapacity crises.
The anti-dumping tariffs were imposed for 5 years: 18,7% for the Magnitogorsk Iron and Steel Company, 34% for ”Severstal” and 36,1% for NLMK and other Russian steelmakers.
The anti-dumping tariffs are retroactive and applied to imports registered during 2 months before February, 12th this year. The representatives of the Russian steelmakers are ready to dispute these tariffs.
In May last year the EU Commission held a year-long investigation triggered by complaints from steel federation group Eurofer which contains 25% of European steelmaking unions. The EU Commission considered that the Russian and Chinese steelmakers exported steel to Europe at unfairly low prices.
According to some statistics Russia increased its steel export to Europe significantly from 5.9% in 2011 to 10.1% two years ago. The Chinese part of steel export also increased from 8.3% in 2011 to 8.7% by the end of 2014.
