The European Commission's proposed duty cut on unwrought aluminium imports to 3% from 6% is expected to go before the Permanent Representatives Committee, or Coreper, on May 2, an EC source told Platts Wednesday.
The source said Coreper was a meeting of EU member states ambassadors.
"Afterwards it should go to the [European Union] ministers as soon as possible," the source said, adding that while there was no date for this meeting yet, it was expected to go before the EU ministers in early May. He said following ministerial approval, publication of the duty cut legislation would take one to two weeks and then the cut would come into effect three days after publication.
The implied timeframe is in line with earlier comments from EC and EU sources that the cut was expected to be in effect by the end of May.
On April 3 the proposed duty cut was agreed on, in principle, by all the members of a Council of the European Union working group. The working group had also agreed that the duty should be reviewed three years from the date of its implementation.
But, a European Union source told Platts Wednesday that the agreed-in-principle proposal would not be presented to the EU ministers before May 7. "Due to technical work, translations and legal adjustments, the proposal for the draft regulation, as approved last April 3 by the Council's working group experts on customs union, will not be presented for final adoption to EU ministers before May 7," he said.
He said around May 3, he would have a better indication of the timetable for this particular issue.
Discussions over the EU's 6% duty on aluminium have dragged on for many years as consumers have pushed to have the duty dropped to open up the marketplace while producers have lobbied to keep the duty to protect Europe's aluminium industry, an industry facing high energy and labor costs.
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