For the third time in a row, the General Assembly of the European retreading association BIPAVER had to take place as an online meeting.
The agenda of the General Assembly included updates on the GRBP meetings in Geneva and progress on the labeling of retreaded tires, as well as a discussion of the current ruling by the European Court of Justice on the anti-dumping duties on Chinese commercial vehicle tires that have been in force since 2018.
At the date of the Genral Assembly no decision had yet been issued by the EU Commission. Following the ruling, the Commission currently has three options for action:
1st option: appeal the ruling to the European Court of Justice. In this case, the judgment will be set aside until the conclusion of the appeal proceedings and the obligations will continue to apply until then or until the end of the regular term at the end of 2023 at the latest.
2nd option: accept the judgment and initiate an administrative procedure, a compliance investigation to correct the errors and reimpose the measures, although probably on a smaller scale.
3rd option: accept the judgment and, if the errors identified by the Court cannot be corrected, do not reintroduce the measures.
We assume that the EU Commission will not appeal the judgment, but will choose the second option for action.
In this case, the Commission may instruct customs authorities not to refund duties until the investigation is completed. They also have the option of having imports of Chinese tires registered with customs to collect duties retroactively when the new level of duties is determined. In the event of registration, importers will be informed by the customs authorities in the Member States that they may re-collect duties up to the original level at a later date.
