Industrial Policy & Trade Monitor· 2675 actions· ✨ 91 recent

On 1 May 2026 the trade pillar of the EU-Mercosur Partnership Agreement (the "Interim Trade Agreement", iTA) entered provisional application between the European Union and the four Mercosur states — Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay — following its publication in the EU Official Journal on 27 February 2026 alongside the broader EU-Mercosur Partnership Agreement (EMPA). The iTA covers goods (eliminating duties on more than 90% of bilateral trade over a transition period including immediate cuts on cars, pharmaceuticals, wine and olive oil), services, government procurement at federal and state level, intellectual property (344 EU geographical indications protected), SPS/TBT disciplines, and a sustainability chapter. Mercosur receives tariff-rate quotas on agri-food exports (beef, poultry, sugar, ethanol, honey). Provisional application proceeds pending full ratification of EMPA by the Council, European Parliament and all EU national parliaments and a pending CJEU opinion; only the trade pillar applies provisionally.

The European Commission initiated an anti-dumping investigation on 21 May 2025 (Notice C/2025/2778) into imports of new pneumatic rubber tyres for passenger cars and light lorries (CN codes 4011 10 00 and 4011 20 10) originating in China, following a complaint lodged by the Coalition Against Unfair Tyre Imports representing EU producers. Provisional anti-dumping measures may be imposed within eight months (by approximately January 2026); the investigation must conclude within 14 months (by approximately July 2026). The EU passenger-car tyre import market from China is estimated at over €2 billion annually and is dominated by Chinese brands including Triangle, Linglong, Sailun, and ZC Rubber.

Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2025/612 of 24 March 2025 amends the EU steel safeguard regime first imposed by Regulation (EU) 2019/159, materially tightening the tariff-rate quota (TRQ) system that governs imports across 26 product categories of finished and semi-finished steel. The Commission cuts the annual liberalisation rate (the volume by which TRQs grow each year) from 1% to 0.1%, effectively freezing the in-quota volumes available to third-country exporters at near-current levels through the safeguard's expiry on 30 June 2026. The regulation also repeals the carry-over mechanism that previously allowed unused quarterly TRQ volumes to roll into the next quarter for product categories under significant import pressure, and eliminates the ability of exporting countries to access the residual (other-country) quota in the final quarter of each safeguard year for those categories. The latter change forecloses the route by which Chinese, Indian, Turkish, Korean and Vietnamese mills had increasingly back-filled into unused Russian and Belarusian quota allocations after the 2022 sanctions disruption. Most adjustments enter into force on 1 April 2025; the slower liberalisation pace and the carry-over removal in the most pressured categories take effect 1 July 2025. The measure is the headline trade-policy deliverable of the European Steel and Metals Action Plan unveiled by the Commission on 19 March 2025, and it is explicitly framed as a defensive response to (i) global overcapacity in Chinese steel and (ii) anticipated trade diversion into the EU after the United States reinstated universal 25% Section 232 steel/aluminum tariffs on 12 March 2025. Above-quota imports remain subject to the 25% out-of-quota duty inherited from the 2019 safeguard.

The European Commission adopted Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2025/501 on 18 March 2025, imposing definitive five-year anti-dumping duties on imports of continuous filament glass fibre yarns originating in China, published in the OJ on 19 March 2025. Duty rates are differentiated by Chinese exporter across the range 26.3%–56.1%, covering CN codes ex 7019 13 00 and ex 7019 19 00 (TARIC level). The measure follows a DG TRADE investigation finding dumped Chinese imports causing material injury to EU producers, directly protecting an estimated 1,200 EU jobs in the glass fibre sector.