12 October 2026 – Brussels asked steel producers, processors and even governments outside the EU about the Steel Regulation. SMEs, importers and traders did not even appear in the questionnaire. At the same time, 44 industry associations are demanding even more trade protection, more staff and more discretion for the Commission.
Steel Quotas: Brussels Consults by Wishlist
Those who use up the EU’s steel quotas and must prove the country of melting for every tonne should be the first to be asked when the system is reviewed. The European Commission clearly sees it differently. In its consultation on Steel Regulation (EU) 2026/1384, importers and traders do not appear at all. Gerber Steel GmbH nevertheless made its position clear.
Only Those Who Fit the Preferred Picture Are Asked
The consultation was aimed primarily at producers and processors. Producers, exporters and governments outside the EU were allowed to comment on displacement and access to quotas. European importers and traders, the companies actually drawing those quotas and taking part in the lottery of their allocation, were not allowed to answer a single substantive question.
Brussels knows how to do better. In June, the Commission explicitly consulted traders and importers on proof of the country of melting, and in 2025 it referred to their need for legal certainty. Today, importers are not even worth a question. Nor are SMEs. The term SME did not appear once in the original proposal for the Regulation.
Twelve Weeks Required, Ten Days Given
Respondents were given ten working days. In the questionnaire, the Commission itself calls the exercise a “public consultation”. Its own guidelines prescribe at least twelve weeks for that. Gerber Steel had asked DG Trade for at least four weeks. In vain. The deadline for participation expired before the first quarter had even been finally allocated.
Answers Ordered in Advance
If you question only producers and processors in detail, you get their view as the result. Those fighting for access to the quotas are missing from the assessment.
“The Commission only asks those whose answers it already knows and whose responses it wants to use as confirmation,” says Thorsten Gerber, CEO of Gerber Steel GmbH. “An EU steel producer may comment on access to the quotas, while distributors and importers are expected to remain silent. That this is not a level playing field should be obvious, and it clearly shows whom the Commission is courting.”
The same is evident from the up to 10 million tonnes of input material, the so called slabs, billets and blooms, imported into Europe every year without any form of trade protection: in Brussels, fairness exists only for the large steel producers. SMEs are left with nothing.
Trade Defence: 44 Associations Demand More from Brussels
More staff, more discretion, more instruments. Forty four European industry associations are calling for tougher trade defence. All three demands lead to the same address: the European Commission. It is hard to serve an authority more willingly when it is already accumulating ever more control.
232 Measures Are Not Enough?
At the end of 2025, 232 EU trade defence measures were in force, while 32 new investigations were launched in 2025 alone. What gap remains? The paper does not say.
Its only source is the €359.8 billion trade deficit with China. A deficit does not prove dumping. According to the same Eurostat source, the supposedly exploding imports rose by 6.4 per cent in 2025. The staffing figure in the footnote is unsupported, the complaint about slow proceedings comes without any comparison, and the new “toolkit” names neither a country, product nor mechanism.
One detail is particularly revealing: in the version dated 8 October circulated by EUROFER on LinkedIn, the Eurostat link still contained the suffix utm_source=chatgpt. In the European Metals version, it does not appear. Has European association work now been handed over to non-European AI systems? It immediately brings to mind the funding networks behind European NGOs.
Small and Medium Sized Enterprises Reduced to Half a Sentence
SMEs appear in half a sentence, as users of the proceedings. Not as the companies paying the duties. Even a supposed SME association signs a paper like this.
That confirms our argument from last week: no association truly represents SMEs, only large corporations, the biggest association members and, ultimately, its own reason for existing.
A Parliament on Its Knees
Instead of restraining Brussels’ appetite for regulation, the European Parliament is fuelling it. There, too, the calls for more trade protection, more CBAM and more tariffs are getting louder.
On its knees, Parliament is rolling out the red carpet for the Commission as if 13,000 legal acts since 2019 were not enough.
Anyone demanding more trade protection should first prove what it is needed for. A link from ChatGPT is not enough.
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