Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 19 January 2022

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine

Cost and Supply of Fertiliser in the European Union: Directorate-General for Agriculture and Rural Development

Mr. Fabien Santini:

It is not my service that is dealing with this. My understanding is that it will be once we will have a completeness of the submission of data, which is not yet the case, according to what I know. What has been submitted last Friday, five days ago, may become the reasons for it to become complete. Then the formal investigation will comment. I do not have the timing, but it is not a question of days. It is a question of weeks to assess this. This is very thorough. We have important procedures to respect so that the voice of everybody is heard.

This investigation back in 2019 took a lot of time to be sure that there were grounds to decide on anti-dumping duties. It is the same kind of caution, evidence and certainty that we need before suspending; the same elements. Again, we are facing a duty of being credible versus any appeal that could be done to courts on this. We are strictly following the procedure and it is not a matter of days, as the Deputy said, it is a question of going through all of the elements. The regulation does not stipulate deadlines but, of course, the Commission is doing its best to do things as fast as possible. If this was the question of the Deputy's colleague, Mr McManus MEP, on anti-dumping duties -----