31 August 2026 – Brussels delivers the Melt and Pour rules on the last possible day. Companies have four weeks to adapt their import processes. Transitional periods soften some of the impact. But the fundamental problem remains: the Commission regulates supply chains faster than it can provide clarity itself.
Melt and Pour: Three Pages of Regulation, Published on the Final Day
Today, Implementing Regulation (EU) 2026/1963 on Melt and Pour was published in the Official Journal. Three pages. Adopted on 28 August. Published on exactly the day by which the Commission was required to deliver the legal act.
Once again, it has used its deadline right up to the final moment. From 1 October, things become serious. Steel importers will then have to declare the Melt and Pour country upon importation and substantiate it with verifiable documents. The Heat Number must also be provided. Without sufficient evidence, the import may be rejected.
A Transitional Period Is Not a Free Pass
At least the Commission has included a transitional period. Until 30 September 2027, evidence may even be provided entirely without a Mill Test Certificate, using invoices, supplier declarations, production records, customs documents or commercial correspondence. After that, an MTC must generally be available. An incomplete MTC may, however, still be supplemented by other documents. That softens the rule. But it does not eliminate the underlying problem.
Because in just four weeks, supply chains must already be organised in such a way that the Melt and Pour country and Heat Number are reliably available, can be assigned to the relevant goods and can be declared. Alternative evidence also explicitly triggers documentary checks by customs and may delay access to the quota.
Companies Plan in Months, Brussels in Deadlines
We already asked on 20 August where the rules were. By then, goods for October had long since been ordered, in some cases already produced or in transit. The Commission had known for months that companies needed clarity. On 2 June, even before the new tariffs and quotas took effect, it launched a consultation on MTCs, alternative evidence and, explicitly, the burden on SMEs.
Why a Regulation of just three pages nevertheless appeared only on the final possible day remains unanswered. The concrete results of the consultation are also merely outlined in bold terms rather than substantiated.
Transparency Is Apparently Required Only from Companies
This is particularly striking against the background of the latest discussion surrounding DG Trade.
As we already wrote last Friday, the same Directorate General can be remarkably less accurate when publishing its own lobbying contacts than it now expects steel importers to be when documenting Heat Numbers, production locations and supply chains.
The problem, therefore, is not Melt and Pour alone. It is the method. Brussels sets deadlines, uses them itself until the very last minute, and then expects companies to adapt international supply chains at short notice.
One year of transition for the MTC. Four weeks for the operational start. Three pages of regulation. Twelve months of lead time would presumably have been too luxurious for business and not socialist enough for Brussels’ economic commissariat.
As early as December 2025, Thorsten Gerber, CEO of the Gerber Group, made the point very clearly in a meeting with the Directorate General for Trade in Brussels: “Life outside is very different from what you imagine it to be from inside your ivory tower here.”
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