§ Lord Hardy of Wathasked Her Majesty's Government:
Whether they will publish a report of the work of the monitoring committee which was established in the European Union to consider unfair trading in engineering steels. [HL1194]
§ The Minister of State, Department of Trade and Industry (Lord Simon of Highbury)Allegations of dumping steel products and of the granting of illegal state aid to the industry are investigated by the64WA Commission on a case-by-case basis. The Commission also monitors routinely the fulfilment of restructuring and other commitments made when, on an exceptional basis, state aid has been approved under Article 95 of the European Coal and Steel Community Treaty: it reports to the Council on this monitoring every six months. No monitoring committee has been established in the European Union, although a joint government/industry UK Steel Subsidies Monitoring Committee was set up under the previous administration to maintain pressure to end steel subsidies in Europe. It published a report in February 1996, but is not planning to publish any further reports.