The World Trade Organization (WTO) has announced that Turkey has requested trade dispute consultations with the European Union regarding the EU’s safeguard measures on imported steel products.

Accordingly, Turkey claims that the EU safeguard measures, in the form of tariff-rate quotas and additional duties, and the investigation that led to their imposition, are inconsistent with a number of provisions of the Agreement on Safeguards and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) 1994.

The EU initiated the safeguard investigation in March 2018, with provisional measures being imposed in July 2018. In February 2019, the EU decided to apply a definitive safeguard on 26 categories of steel products through June 2021.

On 14 February, 2020, the European Commission initiated a second review of the definitive safeguard measures. The first review was opened in May and closed in September last year.