ArcelorMittal European Media Day - Seite 2

Geert Van Poelvoorde, CEO ArcelorMittal Europe - Flat Products, echoed these comments saying, "We have put all our efforts into improving the competitiveness of our business so that we can have a sustainable steel-making operation in Europe - and we are making good progress."  He then outlined the three fundamental challenges the European steel industry is facing, namely:

• European Union legislation regarding the treatment of non-market economies, principally China
• The need for the European Union to modernise its trade defence instruments

The European Union's Emissions Trading System.

He spoke about the progress that has been made to improve the European steel industry's prospects and tackle these three challenges in the past year, recalling the steel industry's difficult end to 2015: 

"Exactly a year ago, I was chairing a crisis meeting in my capacity as president of Eurofer. We were at one of the darkest points in the steel industry. A year on, we're in a better place - for the short-term outlook at least. This improvement is partly due to the effect of trade defence actions taken by the European Commission, which have helped to protect our business against unfair imports."

Mr Van Poelvoorde also acknowledged the industry-wide effort to put steel on the agenda and "fight for the future". But he stressed that on the issue of trade modernisation, there was still a need for more progress. 

"There is no doubt we have seen important progress this year and I am grateful to the European Commission for the seriousness with which they have addressed this matter.  We are not quite yet there though - Europe's procedure for investigating cases of alleged dumping is much slower than in the rest of the world and the dumping duties that are being imposed, are too low.  We would also like to see progress in these two areas.   

He said however that his biggest concern today relates to the method the EU is prescribing in order to have a low carbon economy, the Emissions Trading System. "This is the toughest challenge we face", he said, explaining that the system doesn't take into account the realities of the steel-making industry having been designed for the energy sector, which is a regional market.