Market access / Trade barriers

In general, the EU is one of the most open markets in the world and therefore imposes quite low import duties on industrial products imported into the EU. Unfortunately, it is often difficult for ceramic products to access third country markets due to a large number of trade barriers. Contrary to the situation in the EU, many relevant markets for EU exports have been applying disproportionately high import duties and are increasingly putting into place technical barriers to trade, thereby making it increasingly difficult for EU manufacturers to export their products. Such practices are particularly harmful to the exports in ceramic tiles, tableware and refractory products. Technical barriers can usually take the form of mandatory certification schemes, national standards differing from respective EN and/or ISO standards etc. Other third countries use trade defence instruments such as safeguard measures (e.g. in the form of import quotas) to protect their domestic markets.

Cerame-Unie has built a close cooperation with the European Commission and EU Member States to jointly tackle market access barriers for EU ceramic products. Often Delegations of the Commission in third countries are involved in this work as they normally have good contacts with local authorities. Each year, the most important market access barriers for the EU ceramic industry are summarised in the “Cerame-Unie Inventory of Trade Barriers”, reporting on more than 100 practices in almost 40 different countries.

To find out more about market access database of the European Commission please click here.