Anti-Dumping Measures on the Chinese May Cost Europe $30 Billion

According to estimations of German experts, if the EU implements it plan of introducing antidumping duties for solar panels from China, this would very likely be disastrous for European producers of solar batteries. Solar batteries production would reduce in Europe, and mass dismissals would start.

EU leaders noticed long ago that solar panels from China are sold in Europe for much cheaper prices than their European analogues. It looked suspicious to the European Commission, and they started an investigation.

However, if the commission finds out that the Chinese are really selling their solar panels to Europeans for artificially lowered prices and introduces antidumping duties against China, Europeans would probably suffer from this even more than the Chinese themselves.

Prices for solar batteries would sharply increase in Europe, which, as experts from the German consulting company “Prognos” are predicting, may decrease sales of them by 80%. Many companies that produce solar batteries would go bankrupt. As “Prognos” is predicting, in 3 years, Europe’s economy would suffer a damage equal to more than $30 billion, and about 240,000 workers would lose their jobs.

The European Commission has not so far declared the results of its investigation about whether the Chinese are artificially lowing the prices for their solar panels. However, as some experts suppose, this is hardly because the commission has not found any evidence of that so far. The reason is that with the appearance of the cheap Chinese solar panels, sales of solar batteries in Europe have considerably grown. If antidumping duties for Chinese solar panels are introduced in Europe, this, together with lowing of subsidies to European companies that produce solar batteries, will be very unbeneficial for the European solar batteries industry.

The European Commission understands this very well, and this is why it doesn’t hurry to announce its verdict on this issue. The majority of experts believe that the EU will most likely introduce antidumping duties for Chinese solar panels – like the US did last year. In the US, this produced no cataclysms at the market of solar batteries, although the sales of solar batteries considerably reduced.