The European Commission has announced that it has decided to impose provisional safeguard measures on 23 steel product categories, including reinforcing bars, hot rolled products and steel pipes, in the form of a 25 percent out-of-quota tariff. The provisional measures will be applied for 200 calendar days beginning from July 19.

The commission has preliminarily decided that the EU steel industry is in a situation of threat of serious injury for the 23 steel product categories under assessment and that this situation is likely to develop into actual serious injury in the foreseeable future.

According to the European Commission, the provisional safeguard measures are in the form of a system of tariff rate quotas in excess of which an additional duty will be paid. To ensure access to the EU market to all traditional suppliers, such tariff rate quotas will be based on the average of the annual level of imports in the years 2015, 2016, and 2017. Where the relevant tariff quota is exhausted or where imports of the product categories do not benefit from the relevant tariff quota, an additional duty at the rate of 25 percent will be levied.

Within the scope of these measures, EU’s import quotas will be 714,964 metric tons for reinforcing bars and 1,058,110 metric tons for wire rods.

All products are also subject to the US tariff measures under Section 232.