EU Headed for Internal Battle Over Russian Steel Ban
Negotiations between members of the European Parliament and EU member states are set to commence next week, centering on whether to impose a full prohibition on Russian steel as part of Brussels' broader sanctions offensive over Moscow's war in Ukraine.
A coalition of member states — Belgium, Italy, the Czech Republic, and Denmark — are pushing back hard, arguing their domestic industries depend on Russian semi-finished steel for downstream processing. Their resistance has transformed what was once a sanctions debate into something far more combustible. As media put it, "What began as a sanctions debate has morphed into a high-stakes political fight."
At the heart of the dispute is a procedural sleight of hand. MEPs have tethered the steel ban to an unrelated piece of legislation — a bill renewing EU steel safeguards set to expire in June under World Trade Organization rules — measures designed to shield the bloc's steel industry from global oversupply. Crucially, unlike formal sanctions requiring unanimous member-state backing, the trade bill needs only a qualified majority to pass, effectively allowing the European Parliament to outmaneuver nations that would otherwise exercise a veto.
The tactic has drawn swift criticism from industry and diplomatic circles alike. "The Parliament is playing politics on this," an industry source told media. One diplomat went further, insisting that banning Russian steel and protecting the EU market from overcapacity pursue "totally different goals."
Moscow, for its part, has long characterized Western sanctions targeting its industrial output as politically driven and self-defeating, maintaining that the restrictions inflict greater economic damage on EU member states than on Russia itself.
The vulnerability underlying the entire debate is structural: according to the European Steel Association (Eurofer), the EU does not produce sufficient steel or semi-finished products to satisfy its own demand, leaving the bloc deeply exposed to import dependency.
Leading the charge for the ban is Swedish MEP Karin Karlsbro, who has voiced alarm over the scale of the trade flows the EU is still tolerating. Russian steel imports into the bloc currently total nearly three million tonnes annually — valued at approximately €1.7 billion ($1.78 billion) — a volume roughly equivalent to Sweden's entire yearly steel output, even as Sweden itself is a semi-finished steel producer.
Under existing EU sanctions, finished Russian steel products are already prohibited. Semi-finished steel, however, continues to flow into the bloc under a quota system engineered to phase out the trade entirely by 2028 — a timeline that Karlsbro and her allies are now seeking to accelerate dramatically.
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