The European Commission has announced that it has decided to extend the safeguard measures on imports of 26 steel products for another two years until June 30, 2026, finding that the safeguard measure continues to be necessary to prevent serious injury. Without the extension, the current quota measures would expire on June 30, 2024.

There are also some technical adjustments to the functioning of the measure in two product categories – hot rolled flat products and wire rod – to ensure its effectiveness and the preservation of traditional trade flows. For both product categories, the Commission imposed a 15 percent cap per single country over the tariff-rate quota (TRQ) volume initially available in each quarter to ensure that import penetration on the first day of the quarter would be limited in volumes under the residual TRQ, hence reducing the import pressure on the market.

“Recent market developments resulted in a significant decrease of exports of traditional suppliers to the EU under the residual quotas in some categories, while exports from new countries of origin have increased substantially in a short period of time under the same residual quotas. This change of trade flows has created a series of negative effects to the functioning of the measure in some categories,” the statement said for the reason of the technical adjustments.

The Commission will include Mozambique within the scope of the safeguard measure as from July 1, 2024 due to the expiry of the temporary exclusion of Mozambique from the application of safeguard measures defined in the EU-Southern African Development Community Economic Partnership Agreement.