Ollie SmithBusiness reporter
The EU has announced plans to hike tariffs on imported steel in a move the UK’s steel industry has said could be “perhaps the biggest crisis” it has ever faced.
The commission has set out plans to cut the amount of steel that can be imported into the bloc by half – beyond which the new 50% tariffs will apply.
The EU is the UK’s most important export destination for steel, worth nearly £3bn and representing 78% of steel products made in the UK for overseas markets.
The commission has come under pressure from some member states and their steel industries, which have been struggling to compete with cheap imports from countries like China and Turkey.
The EU is proposing to reduce tariff-free quotas for imports to 18.3 million tonnes a year – a 47% reduction from 2024 levels.
The new measures will come into force early next year, but will first need to be approved by the majority of EU member states and the European Parliament.
“We have global over capacity, unfair competition, state aid, and undercutting in prices and we are reacting to that”, Stéphane Séjourné, the European Commission’s executive vice president for prosperity and industrial strategy.
“Eighteen thousand jobs were lost in the steel sector in 2024. That’s too many, and we had to put a stop to that”, he told a news conference at the European Parliament in Strasbourg.
The announcement is another blow to the UK steel industry, after a proposed deal to eliminate tariffs on UK steel exports to the US was put on hold indefinitely in September.
Several firms were already in dire financial straits.
The government took control of Chinese-owned plants in Scunthorpe earlier this year, while Liberty Steel plants in Rotherham and Stocksbridge collapsed into government control last month.
Speaking on his way to India on Tuesday, the prime m
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