Following discussions held on March 9 by the Member States of the European Union on the European Commission’s proposal to implement provisional anti-dumping duties on leather footwear imports from China and Vietnam, the Federation of the European Sporting Goods Industry (FESI) released a statement reiterating the organisation’s opposition to anti-dumping measures on footwear, which it says would inflict serious harm on the European footwear industry and European consumers.

The alleged ‘benefits’ to a number of uncompetitive Italian shoe manufacturers are miniscule compared to the massive damage duties would cause,” said FESI president Horst Widmann. No single job will come back to Europe as a result of the measures but damage will be done to high-value sectors of the European footwear industry like design, advertising, marketing, sales and logistics.” 

A week ago, the Danish Economics Ministry presented new evidence that duties on footwear would inflict annual losses of €295 million on Europe’s consumers and on European footwear companies producing in China and Vietnam. Those manufacturers calling for duties would gain about €37 million.

  The Italian footwear association’s demand that high-technology athletic footwear should also be subject to import duties makes no sense whatsoever,” said Widmann. It is not a newly invented loophole, as a few Italian manufacturers like to claim, but a clearly defined and longstanding product category of the EU customs code which has been excluded from trade defence measures for over a decade.”

FESI also questioned the compelling evidence” of dumping that the Commission claims to have found.