The European Parliament and the Council of the European Union have reached an agreement to limit the amount of steel that can be imported into the EU territory and to increase tariffs on volumes exceeding the limit. The aim of these measures is to counter the so-called “overproduction,” that is, the excess supply of steel internationally compared to demand, which is causing steel prices to fall and severely impacting the profitability of the European steel industry.
In particular, European steel mills cannot compete with Chinese steel prices – Beijing is the world’s largest steel exporter and subsidizes producers – because they have much higher production costs, also linked to high energy prices and compliance with emission regulations. Since 2008, the European steel industry has lost one hundred thousand jobs.
WHAT THE EUROPEAN STEEL MEASURES ENTAIL
The Parliament and the Council have accepted the measures proposed last October by the European Commission: the amount of steel that can be freely imported into the European Union will be almost halved, dropping to 18.3 million tons per year (a 47 percent decrease compared to 2024, to be precise); tariffs on excess volumes will be doubled and raised to 50 percent.
Currently, European steel mills are operating on average at 65 percent of their capacity: this is influenced by the increase in imports, which in turn is a consequence of tariff barriers raised by the United States, which have caused a reorientation of trade flows. Brussels expects that, thanks to the new measures, these plants will be able to reach 80 percent capacity utilization.
WHERE THE STEEL IMPORTED INTO THE EUROPEAN UNION COMES FROM
In 2025, steel imported into the European Union mainly came from Turkey, South Korea, Indonesia, China, India, Ukraine, and Taiwan.
The new restrictive measures – which still need to be formally approved by Parliament and the Council – require importers to prove the origin of the steel, in order to trace the country where the melting and casting took place and to prevent circumvention of the rules.
THE BREAK WITH RUSSIA
European authorities have also confirmed the goal of completely stopping steel purchases from Russia, preferably by September 2028. In 2025, the European Union imported over 3.5 million tons of Russian steel slabs.
