1. Introduction

On 25 March 2025, the European Commission announced a significant tightening of its steel safeguard measures. These safeguards, first introduced in 2018, are designed to prevent sudden surges of imports that might destabilise the EU steel industry. Under the revised rules, the Commission has reduced the liberalisation rate from 1% to 0.1%, prohibited the transfer of unused tariff-rate quotas (TRQs) between countries (including Russia and Belarus), and restricted the carry-over of unused quotas for categories facing high import pressure.