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German Industry Experiences and Recommendations

▪ To ensure fair international competition, German industry relies on effective and balanced trade defense instruments that ensure a fair and global level playing field for EU-based manufacturers, importers and consumers.

▪ Generally, German industry considers the WTO Agreement on Safeguards to be adequate. In any case, compliance with the requirements of the Agreement must always be ensured.

- Concerns of both producing and importing economic operators, i.e. the Union interest, must be adequately taken into consideration.

- Criteria enabling the application of safeguards must be defined as differentiated and practice oriented as possible.

▪ The (EU) safeguard is an (particularly sharp-edged) instrument intended to avert massive and sudden external shocks and is only to be used in situations of trade policy emergency. Thus, before safeguards are imposed, the European Commission must carefully examine whether the criteria required for this are met.

- The existence of the criteria required for safeguards should be examined on a productspecific basis. Terms such as "unforeseen increase of imports" should be defined more precisely.

- For safeguards to be imposed, there must have been an unforeseen and sharp increase of imports. This together with verifiable negative economic consequences should be the focus of the investigations.

- Interaction with existing EU anti-dumping measures should be prevented, as these may jeopardize supply security at competitive prices in a highly dynamic market environment.

▪ Within the European Union, the safeguards instrument has so far played an only minor role in trade defense. In view of the growing challenges in international trade for some sectors (increasing global protectionism, increasing overcapacities, redirection of supply to the

European market), the European Commission should carefully review the use of safeguards to determine when their application can help to secure a level playing field internationally.

- If (for example, after lodging a complaint) the conditions and criteria for the use of the instrument are met, it must be applied consistently following a precise and balanced investigation.

- There must be a certain flexibility in the monitoring of the safeguards in order to be able to react to changing conditions at short notice. Some interested parties have suggested that the European Commission should monitor developments on the import side more closely. At the same time, however, the necessary degree of predictability for economic operators needs to be ensured.

- The provisions in the EU Regulation on safeguards, describing in which cases safeguards are to be applied to imports from developing countries, should be