The European Union mentioned on Wednesday it has launched investigations in opposition to two Chinese-owned photo voltaic panel makers suspected of receiving subsidies that Brussels is worried are undercutting the bloc’s companies.
The probes are consistent with new guidelines that got here into pressure in July final 12 months that search to forestall international subsidies from undermining truthful competitors within the 27-nation EU.
“The (European) Commission will assess whether the economic operators concerned did benefit from an unfair advantage to win public contracts in the EU,” the bloc’s highly effective antitrust regulator mentioned.
Under investigation are two consortiums, considered one of which incorporates the ENEVO Group in Romania, and the opposite a German subsidiary of Chinese mother or father firm LONGi Green Energy Technology.
LONGi is the world’s largest photo voltaic panel producer.
The second consortium is made up of two subsidiaries each totally owned and managed by a Chinese state-owned agency, Shanghai Electric Group.
The new guidelines demand companies inform the fee when their public procurement tenders within the EU are value greater than 250 million euros ($270 million) and when the corporate has been granted at the least 4 million euros in international monetary contributions within the three earlier years.
“The commission considered it justified to open an in-depth investigation for two bidders since there are sufficient indications that both have been granted foreign subsidies that distort the internal market,” mentioned a press release.
The two consortiums had utilized to design, assemble and function a photovoltaic park in Romania with an put in capability of 110 megawatts, partly financed by European funds.
“The two new in-depth investigations on foreign subsidies in the solar panel sector aim to preserve Europe’s economic security and competitiveness by ensuring that companies in our single market are truly competitive and play fair,” the EU’s inside market commissioner Thierry Breton mentioned.
The introduced investigations will not be the primary underneath the Foreign Subsidies Regulation.
In February, the fee started a probe right into a subsidiary of Chinese rail large CRRC. That investigation was closed after the CRRC subsidiary withdrew this month from a young in Bulgaria to produce electrical trains.
Source: www.dailysabah.com