October 05, 2006	Thursday	Ramazan 11, 1427

BRUSSELS, Oct 4: The European Union on Wednesday adopted, by the narrowest of majorities, new anti-dumping measures to tackle imports of leather shoes from China and Vietnam, a diplomatic source said.The vote to adopt the measures for two years resulted in a 13 to 12 majority in the 25-nation EU, the source said.

The vote will allow the new anti-dumping measures to come into force on October 7, with import duties of 16.5 per cent on Chinese shoes with leather uppers, in place of the current temporary duty of 19.4 per cent.

The tariff on the same kind of shoes from Vietnam will be 10 per cent in place of the current temporary duty of 16.8 per cent.

EU Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson described the measures as “appropriate and proportional.”

“Today's decision was necessary,” Mandelson told a press conference, adding that the commission had an obligation to put proposals to member states when an enquiry showed up bad trade practices.

However, he stressed that carrying out anti-dumping measures did not mean eliminating price competition among producers.

The move has become urgent as the temporary tariffs, applied in April as an anti-dumping measure, run out at midnight on Thursday.

The main vote fault line runs between Europe's economically liberal north, hostile in principle to anti-dumping measures, and the more protectionist south, sympathetic to the views of EU producers.

The commission had

proposed a five-year penalty, but the compromise on the measure's duration, proposed by France, allowed the vote to go through.

In the vote, taken during a meeting in Brussels of the Committee of the Permanent Representatives of the 25 EU nations, nine countries voted in favour of the two-year measures and 12 maintained their opposition.

The remaining four countries abstained on Wednesday but their votes counted for the proposal as they did not oppose it.

“If the EU's Finnish presidency, which was has been hostile to anti-dumping measures, had played its role better, the compromise could have been reached much earlier,” said an EU source.

The decision was bound to raise the hackles of EU distributors who have denounced the sort of protectionism displayed by Italy, whose shoe industry has not well adapted to the new world market.

Vietnam's Leather and Footwear Association, LEFASO, said it had not been informed of the move.

The measures are now set to become official by being adopted at a meeting of EU justice and interior ministers in Luxembourg on Thursday.

Brussels stressed that the tariffs will only apply to shoes with leather uppers which account for around one in ten pairs sold in the European Union.

Last year China exported 1.2 billion pairs of shoes to EU countries, 145 million of which were hit by the provisional anti-dumping measures.

For Vietnam the total EU import figure was 265 million pairs, 80 million of which were affected.

As Chinese and Vietnamese imports swelled, European footwear production fell by nearly a third in the last five years, costing 40,000 jobs, according to the Commission. —AFP