Today’s decision marks a significant and long-awaited response to our repeated calls for permanent safeguards to replace the temporary steel measures first introduced in 2018. For steelworkers across Europe, the European Commission's announcement represents a step forward in ensuring fairer trade conditions and defending quality industrial jobs in the face of persistent global challenges.

Global overcapacity: the root cause of unfair competition

Global steel overcapacity continues to escalate and remains the root cause of unfair competition in international markets. According to the OECD, excess capacity is projected to surge from 602 million tonnes in 2024 to 721 million tonnes by 2027 — more than five times the EU's total steel production. This structural imbalance has flooded markets with artificially cheap steel, driving down prices and undermining the viability of Europe's steel sector. This has created unfair conditions that put thousands of European steelworkers’ jobs at risk and threaten the long-term sustainability of a strategic industry that is essential for Europe’s economy, infrastructure, and climate transition. This scenario is not hypothetical — it is the current reality. Without decisive action, Europe will continue to lose plants, shedding jobs, and surrendering industrial capacity that cannot be rebuilt.

Trade measures alone are not industrial policy

Today's announcement on steel safeguards marks a step in the right direction. However, trade measures alone will not secure the future of Europe's steel industry. The sector continues to face high energy prices, weak demand, and the need for massive investments in decarbonisation to deliver a Just Transition across Europe. IndustriAll Europe reiterates its call for a comprehensive European industrial policy that combines trade defence with active support for clean technologies, affordable energy, and quality jobs. We insist on the fast and urgent implementation of the EU Steel and Metals Action Plan, especially concerning energy prices and demand stimulation. Maintaining the level of political ambition as promised in the EU Steel and Metals Action Plan is essential to restore steel’s competitiveness and save its green transition, as well as steelworkers’ jobs across Europe.

Protecting mutually beneficial trade relationships

Robust safeguards are essential, but actions should be focused on structural overcapacities rather than penalising mutually beneficial trade relationships. Permanent safeguards must therefore be implemented in a way that protects workers from unfair global competition without undermining cooperation across the European steel value chain, notably in the context of improving EU-UK trade relations. 

“This is a long-awaited response to our demands,” said Judith Kirton-Darling, General Secretary of industriAll Europe. “We have been calling for permanent safeguard measures to replace the temporary system, and today’s announcement is a significant and welcome step forward. However, while this marks important progress, trade measures do not make an industrial strategy. In many respects, the most challenging phase lies ahead”.