The European Commission has launched a probe into Pekin duck imports from China following complaints from domestic producers.
The five unnamed complainants argue “significant distortions” in the Chinese economy make it inappropriate to rely on domestic prices and costs for calculating normal value.
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They point to state intervention covering areas such as state presence in the economy, bankruptcy and property laws, and distortions in land, energy, capital, raw materials, and labour markets.
The complainants cite evidence including 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.
They 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 Beijing’s 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,” Brussels said.
The move 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 publication in China today (10 July).
The probe covers the full year 2025. Interested parties may submit comments within 37 days of the notice’s publication, and hearing requests are due within 15 days.
Exporting producers in China are invited to participate and the Commission may apply sampling, requesting company data within seven days via the TRON platform.
