AEGIS Europe is an alliance of European industrial sectors promoting manufacturing, investment, employment, growth and innovation in an environment of fair competition and a level playing field in the EU and abroad. The alliance was created in 2016 to address the critical question as to whether the EU should accept that China was a Market Economy for purpose of anti-dumping policy. Confirming the alliance’s objective, AEGIS Europe sectors increasingly experience the critical need to expand their focus beyond EU trade defence policy and measures dealing with the effects of international economic and trade distortions, towards the root causes of distorted and unfair competition.
Well-designed and enforceable international rules that reflect today’s realities are critical for this purpose. The WTO is the regulatory institution capable of effectively framing and enforcing an international level playing field for the manufacturing industry. AEGIS Europe considers that a rules-based multilateral trade regime benefits all economies. However, the
modernization of the WTO is necessary to address competing economic and political systems.
AEGIS Europe supports the EU ambition to modernize and make the WTO more effective by introducing more transparency, new rules and disciplines and enforcement mechanisms.
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Strasbourg, 07 October 2025 – The new trade measure presented today by the European Commission is a long-awaited proposal to forcefully defend the European steel sector, in full respect of WTO rules, from unfair imports flooding the EU market due to massive global overcapacity. The provisions unveiled by the Commission respond to the needs of the sector and represent a real lifeline for EU steelmakers and steelworkers. The European Parliament and the Council should therefore adopt it as a matter of urgency to enable its entry into force at the beginning of 2026, says the European Steel Association (EUROFER).
Brussels, 01/10/2025
With Europe’s steel industry at breaking point, industriAll Europe and the European Steel Association (EUROFER) held an emergency steel social summit to demand urgent action. Ahead of the announced Commission proposal addressing the impact of global steel excess capacity on the EU steel market, due by mid-October, the European social partners are united in calling for robust and effective trade measures. They also insist on fast and urgent implementation of the EU Steel and Metals Action Plan, especially concerning energy prices and demand. 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.
Brussels, 19 September 2025 – Following today’s meeting between Commissioner for Trade Maroš Šefčovič and a delegation of European steel CEOs on the global steel crisis and the challenges facing the EU steel industry amid massive decarbonisation investments: