UFOP welcomes the extension to the anti-dumping measures aimed at US biodiesel imports

Berlin, 23 September 2015 – The EU Commission has extended the anti-dumping and anti-subsidising measures first imposed against US biodiesel imports in July 2009 by a further five years. The German rapeseed grower association, Union for the Promotion of Oil and Protein Plants e. V. (UFOP), welcomes this decision as an effective protection measure against unfair foreign competition. The EU Commission has once again discovered that the promotion of one dollar per barrel offered by the USA for the export of US biodiesel to the European Union constitutes an abusive subsidy.

It is the firm belief of UFOP that national and European regulations for the promotion of the use of biodiesel must not be undermined by export subsidies that work against the European biodiesel economy, and particularly against the growers of rapeseed as raw material producers. On the contrary, UFOP sees a need for action and agreement on the strategic alignment of the use of biofuels as a contribution to climate protection. Both in the European Union as well as in the USA, legal requirements have been introduced governing the use of biofuels as admixture components in conventional fuels. For this reason, the Union challenges the USA's subsidy policy, as it is in any case incomprehensible why the addition of biodiesel needs to be additionally promoted through tax incentives.

In the opinion of UFOP, the expertise available on both sides of the Atlantic should be used to advance the use of biodiesel as an admixture component for the purpose of strengthening public acceptance, but also to further advance the development of sales potentials. The Union's reasoning for this suggestion is that if higher levels of admixture are possible from an engineering viewpoint, then the pressure to export biodiesel would also no longer exist.