Trade defence in European Union

Abstract

As well as the most other importing countries of the world, the European Union applies a system of trade defence instruments. These instruments empower the European Union to defend its traders against unfair trade of imported products or subsidized imports as well as against change in clear trade flows, if they are harmful to the EU economy. Economical legitimacy of anti-dumping and anti-subsidy trade defence actions is generally based on the fact that the international trade has no mechanism for correcting anti-competitive practice similar to the competition authorities that operate in almost all national economies. The European Union applies trade defence instruments following the rules prepared by WTO agreements, which determine trade defence instruments and principles of application thereof as the legal tools of multi-country free trade system. The article discusses the principles of application of the EU trade defence instruments and analyses the statistics of applicable trade defence instruments.