The European Commission (EC) plans to initiate an anti-dumping duty (AD) investigation against imports of HRC from Egypt, Vietnam, India and Japan in a few days.

The EU is taking new measures to further protect local steel producers, considering that the existing tariff-rate quotas could not be extended beyond July 2026, according to the WTO rules.

Sources, familiar with the matter, confirmed to Metal Expert that the EC is expected to initiate the AD probe into HRC imports from the four countries soon, following a petition filed by Eurofer.

The move would further limit importing opportunities of European HRC buyers, considering the previous decision by the EC to set a 15% per-country cap under the residual HRC quota.

Vietnam, Egypt and Japan are the main HRC suppliers under the residual quota, while India has its own country-specific quota.

Vietnam and Japan have already exhausted their duty-free volumes (141,850 t per quarter for each) for the July-September quota period; Egypt has filled 92% of the quota. India has used its HRC quota (301,703 t) by 75%. Overall, these four countries supplied slightly more than 2 million t of HRC to the EU in H1 2024, accounting for around a half of EU’s total HRC imports from third counties over the period, according to Eurostat.

Fears of possible AD as a result of the new investigation, coupled with EC’s quota restrictions will significantly reduce the inflow of HRC from traditional suppliers and leave EU buyers with few options to replace the missing volumes.

At the same time, when the investigation is completed (usually takes 12 to 14 months), the larger part of the market will be protected with AD when the current safeguards expire on July 1, 2026.