Double coup for Italian shoemakers on foreign trade front

Published: 14 January, 2010

Italy’s and Southern Europe’s persistent shoe lobby won two important battles in Brussels and Strasbourg. While, it has not yet put out an official document on this, the European Commission has stuck to its recommendation to extend the antidumping duties on Chinese and Vietnamese leather shoes for 15months, and a technical working group of the European Council of Ministers has indicated its support, reversing a negative vote cast by the anti-dumping committee of the Commission last November. At the same time, the European Parliament urged the Commission to come up with a final compromise proposal for mandatory labels of origin on shoes and other products imported from a number of countries outside the European Union.

Italy’s chief trade negotiator, Adolfo Urso, expressed great joy after the representatives of Germany, Austria and Malta in the working group of the Council indicated that they will probably abstain on the issue of the anti-dumping duties when it comes to a vote at key meetings of Coreper and the Council. As 15 of the 27 member states of the European Union have said lately that they would support the anti-dumping proposal or abstain, Urso gave it for granted that the Commission’s proposal will pass. Several other meetings are planned on the issue, however.

Last Nov. 19, fifteen governments had voted against the Commission’s initial proposal to extend the anti-dumping duties. They were Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Ireland, Latvia, Luxembourg, Malta, the Netherlands, Sweden and the U.K. All the other member countries supported the European Commission’s call for a 15-month extension of the duties except for Lithuania and Slovakia, which abstained. Abstention on such an issue is equivalent to approval in Brussels. The anti-dumping committee is only an advisory body, and this time the Commission overruled its opinion, as it did in 2006 when 12 of its members voted against the duties.

The same goes for the technical committees of the Council of Ministers, and it is still possible that some governments will again change their positions in one direction.

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