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Trade and Economic Security

Safeguard measures

A safeguard investigation may lead to quantitative restrictions on imports of the investigated product (import or tariff quota) from any non-EU country and surveillance (a system of automatic import licensing).

Trade topics
  • Safeguards
  • Trade defence

Import quotas should not be lower than the average level of imports over the last three representative years for which statistics are available.

In several cases, the Commission has imposed tariff quotas allowing imports in excess of the quota, subject to additional duty

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To respond to growing imbalances in global trade, the European Commission is upgrading its import monitoring toolbox by reconfiguring its ‘import barometer’, which gathers up-to-date import data and was originally established in 2025.

2 min read

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