The Function Of Price Undertaking In European Union Anti-dumping Law And Its Relationship With Competition Law

Since Canada first draft regulation rules against dumping activities in Customs Tariff Act, 1904, the anti-dumping rules has established for more than 100 years with the ongoing debate for its trade protection role. After the Second World War, in order to encourage its members to cut tariff and reduce trade obstacles, anti-dumping measures were listed in the 1947 version of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade as a safety valve for member’s domestic trade environment. For the efficient and lawful application of anti-dumping measures, WTO members reached a consensus on this issue after several rounds of negotiations and signed the Agreement on Implementation of Article VI of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade 1994(hereafter as WTO Antidumping Agreement) which is still the principle rules for anti-dumping measures in recent times. From then on, WTO members, even those countries which have not join WTO, have made amendments of their domestic anti-dumping law in order to comply with WTO Antidumping Agreement.However, after the global financial crisis of 2008, in order to rebuilt domestic economic environment and promote the development of domestic industries, many countries use trade protection measures more frequently than before and anti-dumping measures have become one of the major means of the international trade protectionism. According to the annual report for international trade environment development by WTO in the last two years, 308 trade restriction measures and trade remedy activities have been made in 2012 and the total number of such action has raised to 407 in 2013. China was still the main target of trade remedy investigations in 2013. There are 21 countries/regions have initiate 104 trade remedy investigations against China, among which 71 cases are anti-dumping investigations.In order to terminate the anti-dumping investigation with a lower price, Price Undertakings have been suggested by many commentators as an efficient substitute to anti-dumping duties. Statistic data for the recent few years shows that till March 11 th,2015, there are 92 anti-dumping cases in which price undertakings have been approved by European Union anti-dumping investigation authorities when there are 722 kinds of imported products have had been implemented with anti-dumping measures or still under implementation. Among these price undertakings, there are five(5) undertakings proposed by Chinese exporters that have been accepted by EU in the 21 st century.The history and current anti-dumping regulations will be discussed in the first part. Then, advantages and disadvantages will be analyzed both from the complaint side and the exporters’ side. This dissertation also tries to find out the relationship between the implementation of price undertakings and completion laws and regulations. In the last section, price undertakings offered by Chinese exporters that have already accepted by the Commission will be listed and analyzed in order to find out under what circumstance could the Commission accept and maintain the effectiveness of a Price undertaking rather than repeal it and apply the anti-dumping duty to such exporter.