Opinion of the Advocate General — ECLI:EU:C:2015:342
Date: 2015-05-21
Language of the case: Swedish
Subject matter: Dumping;External relations;Commercial policy
Procedure: Reference for a preliminary ruling
Origin: Sweden

Summary — Judgment of the Court (Third Chamber), 10 September 2015 1. Judicial proceedings — Oral part of the proceedings — Reopening — Conditions (Art. 252, second para., TFEU; Statute of the Court of Justice, Art. 23; Rules of Procedure of the Court, Art. 83) 2. Common commercial policy — Protection against dumping — Injury — Discretion of the institutions — Judicial review — Limits (Council Regulation No 1225/2009, Art. 3(1), (2), (3) and (6)) 3. Common commercial policy — Protection against dumping — Injury — Factors to be taken into consideration — Overall assessment (Council Regulation No 1225/2009, Art. 3(2), (3), (5) and (6)) 4. Common commercial policy — Protection against dumping — Investigation —Obligation of the institutions to exercise due care — Scope — Obligation to automatically assess the impact of a substantive inaccuracy on the determination of the injury — Failure to conduct the due diligence not calling into question the finding of the existence of an injury and of a causal link between the dumped imports and the injury (Council Regulation No 1225/2009, Art. 3(2), (3), (5) and (6)) 1. See the text of the decision. (see paras 39-41) 2. See the text of the decision. (see para 46) 3. The objective examination of the determination of the injury caused to the Union industry, provided for in Article 3(2) of Regulation No 1225/2009 on protection against dumped imports from countries not members of the European Community, must relate, first, to the volume of the dumped imports and the effect of the dumped imports on prices in the Union market for like products, and, secondly, to the consequent impact of those imports on the Union industry. Thus, as regards the determination of that volume or those prices, Article 3(3) of Regulation No 1225/2009 sets out the factors to be taken into account in that examination, while specifying that one or more of those factors cannot in themselves give decisive guidance. The same is true with respect to the impact of the dumped imports on the Union industry. It follows from Article 3(5) of the basic regulation that the EU institutions have the task of evaluating all relevant economic factors and indices which have a bearing on the state of that industry, and one or more of those factors does not necessarily give decisive guidance. That provision thus gives those institutions discretion in the examination and evaluation of the various items of evidence. Finally, with respect to the causal link, under Article 3(6) of Regulation No 1225/2009 the EU institutions must demonstrate that the volume and/or price levels identified pursuant to Article 3(3) are responsible for an impact on the Union industry as provided for in Article 3(5) and that that impact exists to a degree which enables it to be classified as material. (see paras 52-55) 4. Where, in the course of an anti-dumping investigation, one party informs the Commission that the Eurostat data relating to prices and volumes of imports are inaccurate, it is incumbent upon the Commission to assess on its own initiative the impact of those inaccuracies on the determination of the injury. In that regard, the Commission cannot merely send a single request for information to Eurostat staff and await the response of the relevant national authorities. On the contrary, the Commission has the task, pursuant to Article 3(2) of Regulation No 1225/2009 on protection against dumped imports from countries not members of the European Community, of providing positive evidence and conducting an objective examination of the data concerning the prices of the imports at issue. The lack of response from Eurostat staff or the communication of inconclusive answers does not in any way absolve the Commission from conducting that assessment. Accordingly, in the event of a failure to verify the validity of the alleged inaccuracy before the adoption of a regulation imposing definitive anti-dumping duties, the EU institutions cannot be deemed to have examined with the required due care the evidence resulting from the data contained in the Eurostat statistics. However, since, on the basis of the corrected figures, the trends of the corrected indicators for the determination of the injury to the Union industry and of the causal link between the imports and the injury remain overall the same, the failure to examine with due diligence the data relating to the prices and volumes of imports is not such as to invalidate the conclusions reached by the EU institutions. (see paras 67-69)