POLITICO — 2024-05-29
News from Brussels
Highly sensitive announcement could now come ahead of next month’s (June 2024) G7 summit.
The European Commission may inform companies about import duties on Chinese cars only after the European election, German weekly Der Spiegel reported on Wednesday citing sources at the EU executive.
A Commission spokesperson told POLITICO nothing has been decided yet. Companies targeted by an EU anti-subsidy investigation had been expecting the decision by 6 June 2024, in line with the usual legal process for such cases.
The political decision has not yet been made but could well fall in the week of 10 June 2024. That would be directly after the European election, being held from 6-9 June 2024, and before Commission President Ursula von der Leyen joins leaders from Germany, France and Italy at a G7 summit.
The bloc’s trade arm has been investigating suspected Chinese subsidies to its electric vehicle makers and is set to announce duties to balance off the effect on the EU manufacturers. The timeline for the probe, announced by von der Leyen last fall (2023), is however bound by a number of legal restrictions and deadlines.
Several trade lawyers POLITICO spoke to doubted that it was possible to delay the announcement beyond 6 June 2024, as the anti-subsidy investigation rules spell out that companies need to be informed four weeks ahead of the first round of duties that should enter force by 4 July 2024.
“I don’t know of any case that did not respect the four weeks. But this is not a normal case, of course,” one Brussels-based trade lawyer said.
A three-week buffer period is also mentioned in the law, which could offer the Commission a legal avenue to push back the highly sensitive announcement until after the European election. The lawyers also explained that violating either deadline would probably not result in a court overturning the duties themselves.
China has signaled its strong displeasure at the probe into its burgeoning EV industry, whose EU sales hit €10 bn in 2023. It has already launched an anti-dumping probe into European brandies — a move clearly targeting French cognacs — and state media speculate that it could retaliate against European luxury cars and pork meat next.