Keywords

Summary



Keywords

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1. Common commercial policy ° Protection against dumping ° Injury ° Determined at the level of the "cups", a component part of a tapered roller bearing (TRB), which are sold separately ° Manifest error of appraisal ° Misuse of powers ° None

(Council Regulation No 2423/88, Art. 2(1))

2. Common commercial policy ° Protection against dumping ° Injury ° Impact of dumped imports ° Assessed by reference to a representative part of the Community market ° Whether permissible ° Infringement of the principle of the unity of the Community market ° None ° Exclusion of markets that are the subject of national protection measures adopted in conformity with the Community rules ° Permissible

(Council Regulation No 2423/88, Art. 4(4) and (5))

3. Common commercial policy ° Protection against dumping ° Injury ° Establishing a causal link ° Obligations of the institutions ° Taking into account of matters extraneous to the dumping ° Imports of products manufactured in non-member countries by producers related to the Community producers ° Imports not being of such a nature as to reduce the profitability of the Community industry

(Council Regulation No 2423/88, Art. 4(1))

4. Acts of the institutions ° Statement of reasons ° Obligation ° Scope ° Regulations imposing anti-dumping duties ° Inacuracy not preventing comprehension of the reasoning which led to the imposition of the duties ° No effect

(EC Treaty, Art. 190)

Summary

1. By adopting Regulation No 55/93 imposing a definitive anti-dumping duty on imports of outer rings (cups) of tapered roller bearings (TRBs) originating in Japan different from that imposed on complete TRBs, and, in order to establish the existence and extent of the injury to Community cup producers, by basing itself not on the price of complete TRBs, but on the price of the cups, which are one of the components of the TRBs, the Council did not commit a manifest error of appraisal or misuse its powers.

Regardless whether there is competition between cups from different manufacturers and whether one producer' s cups can be assembled with the other component parts of another producer' s TRB, the cups are separate products which are sold and invoiced separately from the other components of the TRB and may, as such, be the subject-matter of an anti-dumping proceeding under Article 2(1) of the basic anti-dumping regulation.

Moreover, and in so far as the product as a whole is interchangeable and can be replaced by a complete TRB from any other producer, any advantage derived from one of the components of that product, in the present case the cup sold as a separate product, is likely to influence the buyer' s choice. When that advantage is one of price, the buyer will in principle prefer the cheaper component without being dissuaded by the fact that it is compatible with only one type of the other component parts of the complete TRB, so that undercutting the price of that component, namely the cup, is likely to injure Community producers of cups.

Furthermore, since the consequence of choosing one of the component parts of a complete TRB is that all the other parts will come from the same producer, the effects of the competition existing between the cups are felt at the level of complete TRBs, so that the fact that cups and cones of different producers are not actually assembled together has the result that the import of dumped Japanese cups first causes injury to Community cups and then injury to the other Community component parts of a complete TRB.

2. The Community institutions' practice of taking only a representative part of the Community market in order to investigate the impact of dumped imports does not infringe the principle of the unity of the Community market, provided that the representative nature of the sample of the Community market adopted is sufficiently demonstrated.

In that regard, they were justified in taking only part of the Community market, which was representative with regard, at the same time, to the investigation of price differences, sales and market shares, while leaving out of account when assessing the injury suffered by the Community industry the markets of certain Member States to which dumped products had no access because of national protective measures adopted in conformity with Community rules. To include those markets would bring down the extent of the injury suffered and thus reduce the protection, on the part of the Community market accessible to imports, provided by the basic anti-dumping regulation.

3. Under Article 4(1) of Regulation No 2423/88, the basic anti-dumping regulation, it is for the Community institutions to investigate whether the injury which they are set to find actually results from the dumped imports and to disregard any injury resulting from other factors.

In a situation where the imports from non-member countries other than that from which the imports subject to the anti-dumping proceeding issue are of the same volume as those from the latter country, where the institutions evaluate the injury suffered by the Community industry in terms of its profitability, it must be investigated whether those imports from non-member countries are not of such a nature as to break the causal link between the dumping and the injury. In that regard, those imports cannot be considered to be of such a nature as to reduce the profitability of the Community industry when they are made by producers related to Community producers and initiated by them.

4. The statement of reasons required by Article 190 of the Treaty must disclose in a clear and unequivocable fashion the reasoning followed by the Community authority which adopted the measure in question in such a way as to make the persons concerned aware of the reasons for the measure and thus enable them to defend their rights and to enable the Court of Justice and the Court of First Instance to exercise their supervisory jurisdiction.

The fact that a recital in the preamble to a regulation imposing an anti-dumping duty is inaccurate cannot be considered to affect the lawfulness of the regulation, where the statement of reasons, considered as a whole, clearly and intelligibly shows the reasoning of the institutions, so that the applicant, which had available to it all the figures on which the Community institutions based their reasoning and which had moreover participated actively in the various stages of the administrative procedure prior to the fixing of the definitive rate, could not reasonably have been mistaken as regards that reasoning.