On 26 April, the European Commission’s DG TRADE organised a Civil Society Dialogue on Trade Defence Instruments (TDI), during which it presented the Report on EU Trade Defence for the year 2018.
The report provides an overview of the trade defence actions taken in the past five years, as well as the novelties of the recent modernisation. For the first time, the European Commission included in the report an assessment of the effects of such measures, which are estimated to have safeguarded a total of 320,000 direct jobs across the EU.
More importantly, the European Commission specifically referred to the ceramic industry as one of the major beneficiaries of trade defence actions. In fact, the report highlights the sharp decrease of imports from China both in ceramic tiles (84%) and tableware & kitchenware (28%) after the imposition of anti-dumping duties.
Moreover, the expiry review for ceramic tiles was explicitly mentioned – together with bicycles and aluminium road wheels – as an example of the efficiency of TDI measures, which were paramount to the survival of the EU industry. Without EU trade defence measures in 2018, 100,000 jobs in the European ceramic tiles and tableware industries would have been put at risk due to illicit trade schemes from abroad.