Turkey and EU antidumping measures against the People’s Republic of China: the case of fibreglass

Despite the existence of a customs union between Turkey and the European Union (“EU”), the latter remains competent to adopt its own protective measures, and thus, antidumping measures. As a consequence, the EU and Turkey have separate antidumping actions, although some of them tend to be quite similar.
The great majority of antidumping procedures that are implemented throughout the world affect Chinese products. The purpose of this article is thus to compare the respective approaches of Turkey and EU, economic allies as well as competitors, to dumped products coming from China, taking the example of fibreglass to illustrate our point.

1. The antidumping procedures

a. WTO and national frameworks
Both countries are members of the Word Trade Organization (WTO) that defines dumping as arising when “products of one country are introduced into the commerce of another country at less than the normal value of the products”.
Such practice is condemned by the article six of the GATT and justifies the countries’ implementing protective measures, i.e. antidumping duties. The 1994 Agreement on the implementation of article VI of the GATT (“the Agreement”) provides for a detailed investigation to be held before the antidumping action can be adopted. As a consequence, EU and Turkey have adopted antidumping legislations within the framework of their WTO obligations.
In Turkey, the liberalization of the economy from the 1980s onwards brought the need for antidumping measures so as to protect the Turkish economy from unfairly inexpensive products. Hence the law 3577 was passed in 1989 and was later on amended by the law 4412 and the ministerial decree 99/13482 of 1999. Two different bodies conduct Turkey’s antidumping policies: the Board of Evaluation of Unfair Competition in Importation and the Department of Dumping and Subsidy investigation (“the