Il Nuovo Postiglione - EU channels Trump with tariffs to shield steel sector

Urged to act fast to rescue European steel from decline, the EU executive will propose doubling levies on steel imports to 50 percent, and almost halving the volumes allowed in before tariffs apply.

"The European steel industry was on the verge of collapse -- we are protecting it so that it can invest, decarbonise, and become competitive again," said the bloc's industry chief, Stephane Sejourne.

"We're not doing Trump-style politics," he told reporters ahead of presenting the plan at the European Parliament in Strasbourg, France.

But the EU strategy mirrors the one embraced by Trump, who likewise imposed 50-percent tariffs to keep out cheap metals from China, producer of more than half the world's steel. Canada has taken similar steps.

Subject to approval by the EU's member states and parliament, the proposal would permanently replace the current safeguard scheme, which imposes 25-percent duties beyond set import quotas, but ends next year.

Sejourne, who will present the measures alongside the bloc's trade commissioner, Maros Sefcovic, said Europe's sovereignty was at stake, as the only major market still so open to steel imports.

The EU's trade chief is hoping, meanwhile, to team up with Washington to tackle Chinese overcapacity and has been in talks with his US counterparts to agree on steel import quotas.

- Millions of jobs at risk -

After the US-EU tariff deal agreed in July, Sefcovic said the European and American steel and aluminium sectors suffered from the same problem.

Alongside the proposal being presented on Tuesday, the EU is seeking a "metals alliance" with the United States to ring-fence their respective economies from over-capacity.

As the 27-nation EU pushes ahead with decarbonising industry, steel is critical for renewable energy equipment, from solar panels to wind turbines, and for electric cars.

"The European Union needs to act now, and decisively, before all lights go out in large parts of the EU steel industry and its value chains," said industry group Eurofer's president Henrik Adam.

Even before the formal announcement, one Belgian trade union welcomed the "ambitious and necessary plan", while the world's second-largest steelmaker, ArcelorMittal, saw its shares rise by nine percent in the past week.

The steel sector employs around 300,000 people in Europe, and nearly 100,000 jobs have been lost in the past 15 years, the industry says.

The current crisis puts those workers at risk as well as 2.3 million indirect jobs, according to Eurofer.

A.Rastelli--INP