On 4 October, two main law-making bodies of the EU, the European Parliament and the Council, agreed on the reform of the EU anti-dumping mechanism. The new reform should enter into force at the beginning of 2018. According to new rules, the European Commission will calculate the normal value for dumped goods imported from China, giving priorities to actual prices or costs on the Chinese market. The European Commission will, however, be authorised to construct the normal value on the basis of corresponding costs of production and sale in an appropriate representative country, with a similar level of economic development as the exporting country if the prices in the exporting country are distorted.

The Commission will assess those distortions on non-discriminatory basis in publicly available reports. It means that those reports could be prepared for not only Chinese industries but also any WTO member state where local prices are distorted.