The European Commission (EC) is set to impose provisional anti-dumping duties on imports of hydrotreated vegetable oil (HVO) and fatty acid methyl esters (FAME) from China, the European Biodiesel Board (EBB) reports.
Announced by the EC in a pre-disclosure document on 19 July, duties ranging from 12.8% to 36.4% would be introduced four weeks after the announcement, the EBB wrote on the same day.
In the interim period, the EBB said it would ask for automatic registration of imports during the pre-disclosure stage, to help the hard-hit EU biodiesel sector before the duties took effect.
The association, which represents European biodiesel (HVO & FAME) producers, said it would closely monitor imports during the interim period and if there was an increase, it might request retroactive imposition of duties.
However, the EBB said it was “gravely concerned” at the EU’s unexpected exclusion of allegedly dumped Chinese sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) from the provisional measures.
“Today we obtained measures that will start to rebalance the scales. Our next step is to work with the EU to close loopholes that will otherwise undermine this good work and also to work with member states and the Commission to ensure any fraudulent practices are dealt with in the future by a more robust sustainability certification system,” EBB president Dickon Posnett said.
“Our European businesses have been suffering for far too long under the pressure of unfairly priced Chinese imports and we are very happy to see the European Commission take action.”
In October, the EBB filed an anti-dumping complaint with the EC and the investigation opened in December.
