Glass Fibre Europe has joined 44 other European trade associations in a joint letter calling on EU policymakers to strengthen Europe’s response to unfair trade practices and growing state-driven distortions affecting European industry.
The letter, addressed to Member States, the European Commission and Parliament decision-makers calls for three urgent actions:
- Allocate sufficient additional resources to DG Trade to ensure that the EU can respond effectively and rapidly to unfair trade practices.
- Make full and effective use of the EU’s existing Trade Defence Instruments, including anti-dumping measures, anti-subsidy measures and safeguards. The letter also calls for threats affecting entire industrial value chains to be addressed through a value-chain approach.
- Develop a new policy toolkit to tackle state-driven distortions that are not adequately addressed by the existing framework.
The letter notably highlights the impact of state-driven distortions originating in certain third countries, including investments in additional production capacity in third-country markets that can contribute to further surges of underpriced exports into the EU.
For Glass Fibre Europe, the initiative comes at an important moment. Europe needs both to make effective use of the trade defence instruments already at its disposal and to ensure that its toolbox evolves to address new forms of distortion affecting the competitiveness of European manufacturing.
The joint letter is available below.