The European Commission yesterday vowed to stand "shoulder to shoulder" with European steel companies and trade unions as officials prepared to counter the effects of US tariffs on imports from the European Union.
Mr Erkki Liikanen, industry commissioner, and Mr Pascal Lamy, trade commissioner, yesterday briefed nine EU steel executives and Mr Reinhard Kuhlmann, secretary-general of the European Federation of Metalworkers, on the Commission's response and its plans to minimise the tariffs' impact on EU companies and jobs.
Mr Liikanen pledged to "do our utmost to protect our industry and its workers against this wholly unfair decision of the US".
He said the EU steel industry was fully competitive, received no state aid and operated in an open market so the Commission could not accept the "US unilateral protectionist measure" which targeted the European industry.
Referring to the EU's 500,000 steel jobs lost and 67 million tonnes of capacity cuts in the past 20 years, Mr Lamy said: "We cannot stand by and allow an industry that has gone through hell and high water to become the most competitive in the world, suffer the consequences of illegal measures by the US." Officials said the Commission was still analysing the US moves and had decided no specific action by yesterday.
It has scheduled a meeting today with member-state officials to discuss possible "safeguard" action against steel imports diverted to the EU from the US.
The EU yesterday responded frostily to a warning from Mr Grant Aldonas, US under-secretary of international commerce, that trade problems could spread to other sectors unless the EU boosted economic growth.
Mr Pedro Solbes, the commissioner for economic and monetary affairs, said any linking of trade matters with other policies was outside the rules of the World Trade Organisation.
Mr Jean-Christophe Filori, a Commission spokesman, denied any link between the steel dispute and Commission plans, due today, to propose levying duties on US and other non-EU airlines using unfair subsidies to slash fares. Mr Filori said Mr Loyola de Palacio, EU transport commissioner, was considering such an initiative as long ago as the first week of February.
Before Mr Aldonas issued his warning, Mr Romano Prodi, Commission president, said he was "really disappointed" at the US action. "There is not the minimal justification for it," he told reporters.
Recalling his days as the head of the IRI, the former Italian state holding company, he said: "I restructured the industry because it was necessary. In the end, our companies were objectively more efficient. The US has to do the same.
"The structure of the American industry is much older than ours, much more traditional," Mr Prodi said. "No major innovation in steel has been American in the post-war period."
- ( Financial Times Service)
