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.
Source: Reuters (Reporting by Sarah Marsh; Editing by Emelia Sithole-Matarise)