European biodiesel industry urges Commission not to lower anti-dumping duties on Argentinian and Indonesian biodiesel imports

The European biodiesel industry is urging the European Commission to stop its proposal to radically lower the anti-dumping duties on Argentinian and Indonesian biodiesel imports.

Member States are to decide on the Commission’s proposal to radically lower the anti-dumping duties on Argentinian and Indonesian biodiesel imports.

The European biodiesel industry warns of the dramatic impact that this decision may have on 120,000 jobs and on the efficiency of the overall future of EU trade defence. It is critical for the EU and national authorities to realise that if approved the current Commission proposal would bring to an end any European biodiesel production.

The European Commission intends to bring the EU anti-dumping duties on Argentinian biodiesel imports in conformity with the October 2016 WTO Appellate Body’s report by August 10th. At the beginning of July, the Commission issued a General Disclosure Document, according to which it plans to bring the anti-dumping duties down to provisional levels or even lower.

According to the European Biodiesel Board (EBB), the extremely low level of new proposed duties will be unable to counter the distortive impact of dumping. Additionally, since the result of the WTO panel on EU duties against Indonesia is still uncertain, it appears as completely illogical that the Commission already intends to drop the existing measures on Indonesian imports. The negative economic impact would be high, thousands of jobs (120,000 most of which in related EU agricultural activities) would be lost, for no convincing reason.

An extension 

EBB Secretary General Raffaello Garofalo said: “There is no reason for the EU to act now. The Commission has agreed with Argentina to do so by 10 August but there are numerous precedents of parties seeking and agreeing to postpone the adoption of measures for a multitude of reasons (technical, political etc.). The EU should ask for an extension of a few months. It is logical at least to see what comes out of the Indonesia panel in September, we expect something positive there.

“Should the Commission prevail and decide to include Indonesia already now, industry is very likely to take this to the European Court. If industry wins and obtains compensation, this will be at the expense of the EU budget, i.e. at the expense of the Member States. Which of course would be unacceptable.”

In the light of the current discussions on the new methodology for calculating dumping margins and on China’s Market Economy Status, the acceptance of the disclosure document by Member States would entail even wider systemic consequences for all future anti-dumping cases and in perspective of China MES.

The proposed levels of duties would open the door to massive imports of Argentinian and Indonesian biodiesel. It is crucial to understand that, over the past years, both countries have continued to expand their production capacities. Indonesia has now reached over 7 million tonnes/ year of operational capacity, of which 4 million tonnes are available for export. Argentina can produce over 5 million tonnes/year, of which 4 million tonnes could be exported.

In a statement, the EBB said that it was extremely worried that EU’s excellence and worldwide leadership in biodiesel would be forever lost at the advantage of two countries (Argentina and Indonesia), whose unfair practices are well proven – to the extent that other countries such as Peru and the US have recently adopted or are in the process of imposing anti-dumping and anti-subsidy duties against these countries’ biodiesel imports.

This story was written by Liz Gyekye, editor of Biofuels International.