EU Slaps Dumping Duties on Biodiesel from
Argentina, Indonesia
The European Commission has imposed
provisional anti-dumping duties on imports of biodiesel from Argentina and Indonesia,
according to an announcement posted in the EU’s Official Journal on Tuesday, 28
May. The news has quickly escalated tensions between Brussels and Buenos Aires
on biodiesel trade policies, which have already been running high in recent
weeks as the result of a separate dispute at the WTO.
The Commission duties officially took effect on Wednesday,
and are meant to target the practice of selling products below their normal
value overseas, also known as “dumping.”
These duties will amount between €75.97 to
€104.92 per metric tonne for Argentine producers, depending on the company
involved. In percentage terms, the dumping margins are 6.8 to 10.6 percent. For Indonesian producers, the range is between €0
and €83.84 per metric tonne - in other words, dumping margins of 0 to 9.6 percent.
The Commission has recommended, since the anti-dumping duty
will apply to both biodiesel and to biodiesel blends - with the latter being
calculated in proportion to the blend’s biodiesel content by weight - that
customs authorities of EU member states apply the duty as a fixed amount in
euros per net tonne.
The provisional duties will apply for six months, according
to the Commission regulation, and will be confirmed, revised, or revoked
depending on the investigation’s final results.
The
Commission had launched the investigation last August, in response to a
complaint filed by the European Biodiesel Board (EBB) - a group of European
biodiesel producers that together make up more than 60 percent
of the bloc’s production. Brussels is also conducting a separate investigation
on whether Buenos Aires and Jakarta have been providing their producers with
unfair subsidies; provisional results of that investigation have not yet been
released.
The EBB claims that both countries maintain differential
export tax (DET) regimes under which they sell final products, such as
biodiesel, at lower prices than the raw material used to make them, such as
soybeans and soybean oil for Argentina and palm oil for Indonesia.
“By having significantly higher export taxes for the raw
materials used to produce biodiesel than on biodiesel itself, DET artificially
discourages raw materials exports in favour of biodiesel exports,” the EBB
claimed in a press statement at the time of the original complaint.
The
Commission investigation found that the allegedly dumped imports more than
doubled in terms of volume during the actual investigation period considered.
The period covered by the investigation was 1 July 2011 to 30 June 2012.
The Commission said that this resulted in a “significant
increase” in those two countries’ total market share - specifically, by 10
percentage points in the12-month period under review. Meanwhile, EU industry
lost 5.5 percent of market share during that same
timeframe.
Buenos
Aires quickly lambasted the European Commission’s decision, calling it “one
more action in the escalation of the historic protectionism of Europe, now
aggravated due to the crisis that transcends the continent.”
The Commission investigation said that it had dismissed the
argument that Union industry was inefficient, noting that many biodiesel
producers in southern Europe are located at port sites with the deliberate
intention of accessing raw materials from Argentina and Indonesia, or are
situated at fossil oil refineries, with the goal of improving the market’s
vertical integration.
The
EU and Argentina are also sparring on the biodiesel subject at the WTO, with
Buenos Aires lodging a complaint earlier this month about policies regarding
the importation and marketing of biodiesel in the EU bloc, as well as its
domestic support of the sector. The WTO challenge also cites the implementation
of these measures by five EU member states.