EU Commission reopens cotton anti-dumping case

EU Commission reopens cotton anti-dumping case

BRUSSELS (Reuter): The European Commission reopened inquiries into alleged dumping of unbleached cotton imports from six countries on Thursday, setting the stage for another internal tussle over the bloc's anti-dumping tactics.

"The decision to open the cotton inquiries was approved," a Commission official told Reuters.

Renewed Commission inquiries into grey cotton fabric from China, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Pakistan and Turkey followed a complaint by Eurocoton, the Committee of the Cotton and allied Textile Industries of the European Union.

Thursday's decision, to be published in the EU's Official Journal during the coming days, said initial work by Commission officials revealed evidence of "substantial" dumping margins for fabric imports from the six countries named.

It reopens a file closed only last May when a majority of EU trade ministers rejected the Commission's case for setting definitive dumping duties against the same six countries.

Eurocoton reacted furiously at the time, saying the ministers had acted unlawfully and vowing to consider legal action in the European Court of Justice.

The measures ministers rejected would have hit imports from the six named countries worth 379 million European currency units (US$424 million) in 1995.

Those proposals would have hit Chinese-origin imports with 18.9 percent duties, those from Egypt with 13 percent, India 17.2 percent, Indonesia 14.5 percent, Pakistan 22.9 percent and Turkey 17.5 percent.