China on Monday appealed to the World Trade Organization (WTO) against the European Union's final ruling of countervailing measures on Chinese electric vehicles (EVs), according to China’s commerce ministry.
China has previously brought the EU's initial anti-subsidy measures on EVs to the WTO.
China regrets to see that despite a barrage of objections raised by relevant parties, including the governments of EU member states, the industry and the public, the EU has still issued final measures of imposing high countervailing duties on Chinese-made EVs, said a spokesperson of the ministry, adding that China firmly opposes this.
To safeguard the development interests of the EV industry and global cooperation on green transformation, China decided to make the appeal to the WTO dispute settlement mechanism, according to the spokesperson.
The EU's final countervailing measures lack factual and legal basis and violate WTO rules, which is an abuse of trade remedy measures and is a practice of trade protectionism in the name of countervailing, the spokesperson said.
China urges the EU to face up to its mistakes and immediately correct its illegal practices, to jointly safeguard the stability of the global EV industrial and supply chains, as well as the overall economic and trade cooperation between the two sides, according to the spokesperson.
The European Commission, the executive arm of the 27-nation EU, announced on October 29 that it had concluded its anti-subsidy investigation and decided to impose a definitive countervailing duty on imports of new battery EVs from China for a period of five years.
The sampled Chinese companies will be subjected to different countervailing duties, specifically, 17.0 percent on BYD, 18.8 percent on Geely, and 35.3 percent on SAIC.
China appeals to WTO over EU's final ruling of countervailing measures on Chinese EVs: commerce ministry
