On 7 October 2025, the European Commission presented a proposal for a new regulation to address the growing impacts of global overcapacity in steel production on the European Union market. Detailed information about the new rules is provided in the article.
The Commission underlines that the European steel industry remains a key part of the EU’s industrial base, but faces increasing pressure from the overproduction of iron and steel on world markets, which undermines its competitiveness. To strengthen and develop Europe’s production capacities the Steel and Metals Action Plan (SMAP) was adopted in March 2025, setting out a framework for strengthening steel sector safeguard measures.
The current EU safeguard measures on imports of iron and steel, introduced through Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2019/159, currently apply tariff-rate quotas to imports of selected types of these metals. Those measures shall expire on 30 June 2026. In response to the “rapidly deteriorating situation” in the domestic steel industry, the Commission is now proposing a new, stricter framework to provide more effective protection. The proposal covers a wide range of steel and iron products listed in Annex I, including semi-finished products, non-alloy and stainless steel.
To mitigate imports of iron, steel and products made from these metals outside the EU, both the current safeguard measure and the proposed regulation introduce non-preferential tariff rate quotas for specific product groups.
These tariff rate quotas allow the application of a contractual duty rate, which in the vast majority of cases is 0%, to a predetermined volume of imported goods. In the context of the new draft measure, the European Commission points out that compared to the volume of quotas for 2024, these quotas will be reduced by 47% to 18.3 million tonnes per year. Such a reduction is considered necessary for the measures to be effective. The reduced quota volumes for each product category are set out in Annex II.
Once the non-preferential tariff rate has been exhausted, an ad valorem duty rate of 50 % will be applied to imported products in addition to the standard duty rate. This is a significantly higher duty rate than the currently applied 25%.
A key novelty of the proposal is a new rule of origin referred to as the “country of melt and pour”. This refers to the place where raw steel or iron is first produced in liquid form and subsequently cast into a solid state. The aim is to prevent the circumvention of EU trade defence measures and to limit market distortions caused by State support for production in certain third countries.
Importers will have to prove the country of smelting and casting with appropriate documents (evidence), such as the Mill Test Certificate (MTC), which is currently also used in the context of the established Council Regulation 833/2014. It can be assumed that the European Commission will specify in the near future what other documents can be accepted as evidence. At the same time, the introduction of this rule will increase transparency and traceability in the steel supply chain and allow the Commission to better monitor steel import flows from non-EU countries.
The safeguard measures will no longer apply to products originating in Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein.
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