The European Commission dismissed on Thursday (13 June) Chinese businesses’ allegations that it repeatedly misused its legal powers during its anti-subsidy probe into electric vehicles produced in China.
On Wednesday, the EU executive announced provisional duties of up to 38.1% on China-manufactured battery electric vehicles, after the anti-subsidy probe it started in October last year concluded that Chinese companies had received unfair state support and posed a “threat” to Europe’s own automobile industry.
“All actions taken by the Commission as part of this investigation have been fully in line with applicable EU and WTO standards,” European Commission spokesperson for trade, Olof Gill, told Euractiv.
“This is a targeted, fact-based investigation, and we assessed all information provided by the interested parties in an objective manner,” he added.
Gill’s comments come after Beijing aired a second official reaction to the EU executive’s preliminary tariff decision on Thursday, with spokesperson for the Chinese Ministry of Commerce He Yadong stating the country will consider fling a lawsuit at the World Trade Organisation (WTO).
Gill was specifically reacting to a statement by China’s Chamber of Commerce to the EU on Wednesday that “several enterprises and stakeholders have reported misuse of investigative power and misconduct by the [Commission] during the investigation.”
The trade body, representing over a thousand Chinese companies operating across the bloc, accused EU officials of “unreasonable document and information requests beyond the enterprises’ capacity and burden of proof, and insufficient time given to these enterprises to collect requested data and information”.
The Chamber also said the EU executive had failed to rectify “its procedural missteps”.
The latest tariff spat comes amid worsening ties between Beijing and Brussels, which were aggravated by China’s increasingly close links with Russia following the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
It also comes amid mounting concern about the risks China’s state-subsidised exports pose to the rest of the world economy, with Brazil, Turkey, and the US all recently announcing steep increases in import duties on Chinese vehicles.
[Edited by Anna Brunetti/Alice Taylor]
