BRUSSELS, Nov. 18 -- "We are trying to defend our standards against others and that is like colonialism," Helmut Scholz, a German member of the European Parliament (MEP), has said.
Scholz made the remarks in a recent interview with Xinhua in Strasbourg where the European Parliament gave green light to the new anti-dumping rules.
The new legislation is playing with words, using the "substantial market distortions", which is stated neither in the anti-dumping nor the anti-subsidy rules of the World Trade Organization (WTO), as a replacement of the "surrogate country approach".
"If you are taking this new anti-dumping legislation as a benchmark and you say that there shouldn't be any interference at all from the states, but in Europe we give state subventions to the energy sector or other subventions," said Scholz.
"We are trying to defend our standards against others and that is like colonialism," Scholz said, calling on the European Union (EU) to "go for a more global approach".
"We have to find a more general approach and work together with other countries to create new standards in the WTO. We should introduce standards valid for every country," he added.
Asked about the lack of competitiveness of the EU steel industry which is a big supporter of the new legislation, Scholz said some EU member states don't want to invest in their not very advanced infrastructures and that leads to the uncompetitiveness.
"It's not logic for the EU to ask China to shut down their steel plants when they asked China to invest and produce more 12 years ago when the economic crisis started," he said.
According Scholz, it is necessary to rethink the entire structure of the world economy as everything is interlinked. "Here we want only to defend what we have achieved until today, this is not realistic and it should not continue."
Scholz said he believed China is a normal partner in the international global economy. In Germany, he said, there are some factories closing, and "nobody apart the trade unions, is complaining about unfair competition".
"When the Chinese are coming to open factories they are even, until now, protecting certain jobs places," he said.