Posted on 11 Dec 2025
The European Commission is being urged to make a clear commitment to extend its trade restrictions to steel derivatives and start cooperating with downstream industries, steel companies, processors and associations including Eurofer, ArcelorMittal, Thyssenkrupp, Malvestiti Group, Trancerie Emiliane and others state in a joint note obtained by Kallanish.
The joint call aims at ensuring protection for strategically important electrical steel derivatives such as transformer laminations and stator/rotor cores for generators and electric motors. Also in focus are key electrical steel intensive components such as generators, transformers and motors used in renewables, power distribution and e-mobility.
These products are not currently covered by trade instruments, leaving a gap in the protection of the full value chain. Stakeholders say the Commission’s work should result in an initial legislative proposal within six months of the steel measures entering into force.
Europe’s steel and electrical steel value chain is facing a critical moment as deindustrialisation accelerates and global overcapacity depresses prices. Rising imports, from coils to laminations, rotor and stator cores, and transformer parts, are hitting utilisation rates and margins across the sector, the organisations point out.
Against this backdrop, the European Commission’s 7 October trade regime proposal is seen as a necessary intervention to restore fair competition. Companies in the steel chain are urging adoption by early 2026 so measures can take effect on 1 April “to stabilise the market and restore fair competition”.
While the proposal addresses distortions affecting 28 steel product categories, pressure is spreading fast to steel derivatives and downstream components used in energy-transition technologies and electric motors.
“Steel product protection alone is not sufficient. It could unintentionally expose downstream industries to intensified unfair competition and circumvention practices with the consequence of hollowing out the very industrial value chain it seeks to preserve. That is why we strongly support a coordinated two-step approach to strengthen Europe’s entire industrial ecosystem,” the note concludes.
Due to its high level of complexity, however, trade law experts anticipate the new trade regime is unlikely to be implemented before July 2026.
Source:Kallanish
