EC announced protective measures against imports of rolled metal

The European Commission (EC), represented by the Directorate General for Trade, has officially informed the Ukrainian Delegation to the EU about the protective measures regarding the import of rolled metal products, which will come into force on February 2, 2019 and will be valid until June 30, 2021.

These measures represent country-specific and global tariff quotas, after which a duty of 25% will be applied. Individual quotas are used on an annual basis, while global quotas are used on a quarterly basis, while the unselected volumes of the previous quarter are transferred to the next.

The calculation is based on the average volume of imports of rolled metal over the past three years (2015-2017), increased by 5%. Three periods are envisaged (see Table 1), while the volume of the quota in each subsequent period is equal to the volume of the previous one, with an increase of 5%.

If a country chooses its own individual quota for a specific group, and in the fourth quarter of the current period the volumes of the global tariff quota for the same group remain unselected, then such countries will be able to supply their products within the framework of the remaining global tariff quota without paying a protective duty.

Rolled metal products originating from Ukraine are subject to tariff quotas for 14 product groups, of which individual tariff quotas are set for 12, and global tariff quotas for two (group 1 and group 20). It should be noted here that to 11 groups of commercial products, within which preliminary protective measures were extended to Ukraine, 3 more were added, namely group 19 (railway materials), group 24 (other seamless pipes) and group 27 (cold-rolled rods and bars from unalloyed and alloyed steel).

At the same time, if the share of Ukraine in any of the other 14 product groups, for which the protective measure does not apply to it, suddenly exceeds 3% of the total export of these products to the EU, or the total share of "developing" countries ( i.e., the share of each of which is below 3%) will exceed 9% in the total volume of exports to the EU countries, then the effect of the global tariff quota for this group will also apply to Ukraine.