Europe seeks to curb flood of Chinese textile imports

European Union trade ministers yesterday backed a full investigation into allegations that cheap textiles and clothing from China were flooding the EU market, but disagreed on imposing fast action to block imports.

Luxembourg Deputy Foreign Minister Nicolas Schmit, whose country holds the EU presidency, said all 25 trade ministers backed the launch of a 60-day investigation by the European Commission to see whether the cheap imports were disruptive.

“We have to deal with this urgently. We don’t exclude safeguard measures,” he told reporters.

China has defended its surging textile imports, saying the increase is a result of changes in international trade rules and that Beijing has imposed its own measures to control the boom.

The EU trade ministers met with EU Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson late on Sunday after he announced he was launching the investigation into the cheap Chinese imports.

Despite calls from Europe’s main textile industry, backed by a group of 13 countries including France, Portugal, Italy, Poland and Lithuania, the EU ministers failed to agree on imposing fast-track measures for an interim cut of imports.

Sweden, the Netherlands and Britain were against emergency measures, diplomats said.

French Foreign Minister Michel Barnier reiterated that Paris wanted the EU “to act without delay” to save European textile sector jobs, demanding Mandelson make sure action is taken to curb imports before the end of August.

“The situation is grave for European industry and jobs,” Barnier said. “We have to act as quickly as possible … and take protective measures.”

In Brussels, Mandelson’s spokeswoman Claude Veron-Revile warned that the EU could not rush into emergency measures. She said caution was needed to avoid sparking a Chinese legal challenge at the WTO.

The EU investigation was criticised by the Foreign Trade Association, which represents several leading European retailers.

“This new threat of import restrictions is neither comprehensible to importers nor European commerce,” said FTA General Secretary Jan Eggert. “The imposition of safeguard restrictions would be a major drawback to European commerce.”

The Brussels-based FTA said the problems with Europe’s textile industry were due to a failure to restructure rather than the short-term increase of Chinese imports.

Mandelson said that the European Commission would investigate nine categories of clothing and textiles, including t-shirts, pullovers and women’s overcoats, because statistics from the first four months of this year showed there “was cause for serious concern”.