Community's anti-dumping and anti-subsidy activities: monitoring of third country cases. 19th annual report 2000

The European Parliament adopted a resolution drafted by Michel HANSENNE (EPP-ED, B) on the Commission's report. Parliament welcomed the report, but felt that current EC methodology may need adjustments as to: -shortening the time delay for enforcing provisional measures; -facilitating prompt interim reviews in the event of absorption, circumvention and other blatant inefficiency; -granting the Commission the means commensurate to the needs deriving from the above. An anti-dumping policy should not induce expectations leading domestic firms to consider them as a protective measure rather than a temporary instrument seeking to restore fair competition. Parliament stated that EC anti-dumping policy should examine the use of possible practices such as: -simultaneous use of measures such as anti-dumping and quantitative restrictions; -avoidance of selective export transactions for launching an investigation without recourse to all export practices and transactions. An EU anti-dumping policy should have the following features: -recognition that these are temporary protection measures but may be prolonged if material or serious injury is found to be the case under the review procedure; -facilitate easy and affordable access for domestic SMEs to complaints procedures and assistance for injury investigations; -the unrelated EC customer condition should be treated with caution because it may be blurred under the forces of MNCs, which may split its production between several countries and thus technically create unrelated EC customers via affiliated EC companies or via inter-group transfer pricing. Parliament went on to propose certain issues that the Commission should take into account in its contribution to the WTO negotiating group. These include improvements in the access to non-confidential documents and the strengthening of mechanisms of discipline. Member States are urged to pursue solidarity on trade issues and not to take unilateral action without prior consultation with their partners, as was evident in the US steel case.�