The European Commission has launched a probe into Pekin duck imports from China following complaints from domestic producers.
The complaint was lodged on 26 May by five unnamed producers.
The complainants argue “significant distortions” in the Chinese economy make it inappropriate to rely on domestic prices and costs for calculating normal value.
They point to state intervention highlighted in the Commission’s own reports, covering areas such as state presence in the economy, bankruptcy and property laws, and distortions in land, energy, capital, raw materials, and labour markets.
Specific evidence includes China’s 14th Five-Year Plan for agricultural modernisation targeting livestock and poultry sectors, the Animal Husbandry Law mandating state support for genetic resource conservation and national breeding programmes.
The complainants also highlighted provincial interventions notably in Shandong that promote regional feed production clusters through subsidies for soy-processing and compound feed mills while controlling production capacity, crop structures, and the entire supply chain.
References were also made to directives in the recently approved 15th Five-Year Plan (2026–2030) aimed at accelerating agricultural and rural modernisation.
The Commission determined there is “sufficient evidence” of dumping linked to these distortions to open a formal probe.
“The evidence provided by the complainants shows that the volume and the prices of the imported product under investigation have had, among other consequences, a negative impact on the quantities sold, the level of prices charged and market share held by the Union industry, resulting in substantial adverse effects on the overall performance of the Union industry.”
The move targets China’s agricultural sector for the first time and follows the inaugural China-EU trade mechanism meeting on 29 June.
“Despite certain progress having been made in recent rounds of engagement, the EU actions taken on Thursday showed that it continues to pile on new protectionist measures and enlarge its so-called toolkit in its trade aggression toward China,” Yang Chengyu, an expert on European affairs at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, told the Global Times today (10 July).
The investigation will also examine injury to the Union industry, with complainants providing data on rising Chinese imports in both absolute volume and market share.
The dumping probe covers the full year 2025, while injury trends will span from the beginning of 2022 through the end of 2025.
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