Interfax China citing Beijing based Custeel reported that Germany's two largest steel mills ThyssenKrupp AG and Salzgitter AG have raised the issue of AD sanctions against Chinese steel product exports at the International Iron and Steel Institute AGM held in Berlin on Monday. As per report, both ThyssenKrupp and Salzgitter have submitted a formal complaint to the European Commission in Brussels last weekend.

According to an announcement on the Stahl-Zentrum website, an umbrella organization for the German steel industry, the German federal government supports AD measures against Chinese steel product exports and dispatched the federal minister for economic affairs Mr Michael Glos to the AGM in order to hurry the process along.

However, European Union Industrial Commissioner Mr Gunter Verheugen commented that it is still unclear as to whether the European Commission will implement AD and CVD measures against China, as investigations have not yet been completed.
According to a presentation given at the AGM by Mr Dieter Ameling, president of the German Steel Federation and chairman of the Steel Institute VDEh, a number of European steel producers are currently preparing anti-dumping cases against China. However, the use of trade sanctions is always a last resort when all political initiatives have been exhausted in order to protect EU industry against unfair trade practices. Mr Ameling also advised China that instead of exporting steel produced at the expense of the Chinese environment, they would do better to remove their uneconomical and heavily polluting capacities from the market in order to prevent the current dispute from becoming a long standing trade conflict.

The EU is currently China's second most important export market after Asia, receiving approximately 17% of China's annual exports. China's steel product exports to the EU are set to double from last year to 10 million tonnes this year, after only having passed the 1 million tonne mark in 2005.