The European Commission (EC) has announced the final decision of the antidumping (AD) duty investigation launched in November 2011 regarding certain tube and pipe fittings of iron or steel with an external diameter of up to 609.6 mm, from Turkey and Russia. The EC has decided to impose an antidumping duty ranging between 2.9 percent and 16.7 percent for Turkish exporters, while it has set a country-wide antidumping duty rate of 23.8 percent for Russia.
According to the EC, Turkey's Steel Exporters Association (CIB) argued that imports from Turkey and Russia are not similar in terms of conditions of competition as there are "differences in geographical concentration of sales". According to the CIB's statistics, during the investigation period Turkey has concentrated over 70 percent of their sales on Spain, France, Italy and Poland, while Russia concentrated almost all of their sales on the Czech Republic and Germany. However, the EC rejected the claim by indicating that the differences in geographical concentration of sales cannot be considered to be an indication of different conditions of competition.
Given that the European Union is a single market, the EC underscored that the point of entry of any imports will normally not be decisive for the competitiveness of those imports with each other and vis-à-vis the like product, adding that Russian and Turkish imports are similar in respect of price and were both found to undercut EU prices and that their channels of sales are similar.
The products covered by the investigation currently fall within CN codes ex 7307 93 11, ex 7307 93 19 and ex 7307 99 80.
