The European Union and
Turkey have agreed the bloc has until Jan. 16 next year to comply with a World Trade
Organization (WTO) ruling regarding its "safeguard" measures designed
to curb steel imports, the WTO said on Tuesday.
The
EU introduced "safeguard" measures in July 2018 in the form of
tariff-rate quotas. They allow various grades of steel to come into the bloc
free of tariffs up to certain quotas, but any further imports face 25% tariffs.
Turkey,
which is a major steel exporter to the EU, complained that the EU's measures
breached the bloc's commitments to the WTO.
Under
WTO rules, members are allowed to impose safeguards under specific conditions,
including that imports have risen to the point where they are damaging domestic
industry and that this should be the result of "unforeseen
developments".
A
WTO panel in April accepted Turkey's view that the European Commission had
failed to show that steel imports rose because of unforeseen developments and
that the EU industry was threatened with serious injury.