EU Safeguard review results officially announced

Mar 25, 2025

by Gerber Group | Mar 25, 2025

25 March 2025 – The European Commission today published the final results of the EU Safeguard Review. Even though the Commission has made some tightening, the EU steel lobby was not able to fully assert itself with its excessive demands – some product areas even emerged from the review almost unscathed.

The EU Commission today published the official result of the technical review of the EU Safeguard measure on certain steel products.

COMMISSION IMPLEMENTING REGULATION (EU) 2025/612 of 24 March 2025 amending Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2019/159 imposing a definitive safeguard measure on imports of certain steel products

Even though the Commission has made some tightening measures, such as reducing the rate of liberalisation of tariff rate quotas (TRQs) from 1% to 0.1%, the lobby organisation of European steel producers EUROFER has not been able to prevail with most of its completely exaggerated and, in many eyes, illegal demands.

Among other things, the Commission differentiated the allocation of TRQs more strongly according to market pressure. To this end, the Commission has divided the 26 Safeguard product categories into four groups (from very high to no import pressure), each with different adjustments.

There has also been an adjustment of the access rules to the so-called residual quotas, which means that countries with specific quotas and with strong import pressure will no longer have access to the residual quota in the last quarter.

The EU Safeguard product categories were divided into four groups. Targeted measures are based on this.

In the case of stainless steel, all long products in the categories Stainless Bars and Light Sections (14), Stainless Wire Rod (15) and Seamless Stainless Tubes and Pipes (22) are affected by the Safeguard tightening.

The Gerber Group participated as a party to the EU Safeguard procedure with two extensive and very detailed submissions in the field of stainless steel rolled flat (Stainless Hot Rolled Sheets (8) and Strips, Stainless Cold Rolled Sheets and Strips (9) and Stainless Hot Rolled Quarto Plates (10)) and we are pleased that we have made a significant contribution to get these product groups through the process almost unscathed.

We were thus able to completely refute the intentionally constructed claims made by the lobby organisation EUROFER regarding a considerable import pressure for stainless steel flat products. It is to be hoped that the European Commission will not be misled by such accusations in the future again.

The Gerber Group will continue to advocate for the rights, competitiveness and entrepreneurial freedom of small and medium-sized enterprises in such market protection proceedings.

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