Anti-Circumvention Duties under Review (Updated for 2009)

Since 28 November 2006, the anti-circumvention duty on certain bicycle parts from China is under review.

Grounds for Review

The European Commission’s grounds for the review are as follows: since the introduction of the measures, a large number of companies based in the Community have requested and obtained exemption. Furthermore, the current number of parties asking for an exemption is significant. At the same time there are no apparent indications of circumvention practices by companies having been granted an exemption.

Finally, the Commission has at its disposal sufficient evidence that if the extension of the measures on imports of bicycles to imports of certain bicycle parts was removed, there would be no continuation or recurrence of circumvention practices. As a result, the Commission is now carrying out a review.

According to the Basic Regulation, the investigation must be completed before 28 February 2008In November 2006, the European Commission initiated a review of the anti-circumvention duties on certain bicycle parts from China. Their grounds for the review were as follows. Since the introduction of the measure, a large number of companies based in the Community had requested and obtained exemption.

Furthermore, the number of parties still asking for an exemption was significant. At the same time there were no apparent indications of circumvention practices by companies having been granted an exemption. Finally, the Commission had at its disposal sufficient evidence that if the extension of the measure on imports of bicycles to imports of certain bicycle parts was removed, there would be no continuation or recurrence of circumvention practices. In addition, the measure had been in force for 10 years and it had never been reviewed since its introduction.

Notwithstanding all this and on the basis of a line of thoughts, which is sometimes hard to follow, the Commission concluded: “The review has shown that currently no circumvention appears to be taking place. However, it has also shown that the risk of recurrence of circumvention cannot be fully excluded. On the basis of the analysis carried out, there seems to be a risk, though limited, that in the medium term, the current non-existence of circumvention will not last should the anti-circumvention measure be removed, as Community assemblers could substantially increase assembly operation by using more Chinese bicycle parts than the 60 % threshold, which would then undermine the remedial effects of the antidumping duty on Chinese bicycles.”

Because of the large number of Community assemblers, the Commission decided to apply sampling. 158 companies properly completed the sampling form and agreed to cooperate further in the investigation. Among these the Commission selected 8 and carried out verification visits at the premises of Planet’ Fun, Decathlon Italia, F.lli Masciaghi and Denver SRL.

After the evaluation of the eight sampled assemblers and of the 158 complete sampling returns, the Commission established that the average proportion of Chinese parts from the sampled eight assemblers was 37 %, i.e. far below the 60 % threshold for exempted parties. The overall proportion of all cooperating assemblers was even lower and stood at 29 % during the investigation period.

As a result of this finding and of the fact that no evidence of anti-circumvention was found with almost all Community assemblers, the Community concluded that no circumvention was taking place. Nevertheless, the Commission assumed that following the removal of the anti-circumvention measure, the assembly of Chinese bicycle parts would substantially increase.

In addition, the Commission assumed that if some Community assemblers would increase the use of Chinese parts, then others would probably also start using more Chinese parts. In view of all these assumptions, the Commission could not exclude a substantial increase of imports of Chinese parts and assembly operations in case the anti-circumvention measure was to be removed.

Therefore, the measure was maintained and will normally continue to apply until July 15, 2010.