Legal eagles sharpen their commercial talons

For attorneys, there is a sunny side to disputes over solar panels and other matters in the EU

The quality of Chinese lawyers specializing in anti-dumping cases in the European Union has improved markedly as disputes have flared, simmered and been resolved, lawyers say.

Many anti-dumping complaints have been lodged in the EU against China in recent years, especially in the steel and solar photovoltaic sectors, and Robert MacLean frequently works with Chinese law firms to deal with these disputes.

MacLean, a partner in the international law firm Squire Patton Boggs and who has practiced anti-dumping law in Brussels for more than 20 years, including a period on the European Commission's Trade Defense Instruments directorate, says the quality, responsiveness and professionalism of Chinese lawyers has greatly improved over the past 10 years.

It is good that Chinese lawyers are playing a greater role in anti-dumping cases in the EU, he says, adding that when many Chinese law firms were entering the EU anti-dumping legal services market 10 years ago the quality of their work was often dubious.

The main driver at the time was the commission's policy toward Chinese companies claiming market economy status, he says. The commission forced all Chinese companies that wanted to claim such status to submit many documents, such as English translations, before any sample was selected.

"Sometimes as many as 50 enterprises needed to make the market economy status claims of this kind for a single investigation. So there was so much work around Chinese anti-dumping cases, but it was basically low-quality, high-volume commodity work."

However, the commission changed its policy about five years ago, and it now selects a sample from Chinese exporters, with only those companies in the sample needing to submit the market economy status form and the supporting documents. "The volume of work dropped like a stone, as a sample sometimes includes only four or five export companies."

Because of this change, many Chinese law firms that had blindly entered the EU market quit, leaving a much smaller group, ones who regarded anti-dumping services not as a commercial opportunity but as an area where they wanted to develop their specialized services, MacLean says.

"Now, many Chinese lawyers, and interestingly some of the younger ones, are as equally knowledgeable about the EU's anti-dumping and anti-subsidy laws as their European counterparts. So, basically the pool of Chinese lawyers offering these kinds of services shrank considerably, but the ones that remained were, to a large extent, the cream of the crop."

He does not think language is a barrier between EU lawyers and Chinese ones, "as we can create an effective Chinese-English language communication stream for the purpose of communicating with the commission's team, while the English of most Chinese anti-dumping attorneys is now excellent".

Bao Yongqing, a Chinese lawyer specializing in anti-dumping cases in the EU, says experienced Chinese lawyers with good communications skills and a clear understanding of what the EU investigators look into have played a key role as Chinese exporters have become embroiled in anti-dumping cases.

"A good anti-dumping lawyer is like a bridge, improving efficiency of the EU's investigation and alleviating the worries of Chinese businesses as they are running," says Bao, who has been engaged in the industry in Brussels for about eight years, dealing with the anti-dumping disputes in various industries, including food additives, high-tech fiber, paper and steel.

"Most Chinese companies get into a panic when EU investigators suddenly ask a very specific question they had not expected," Bao says. "Their imprecise answers at the time may cause misunderstandings that can often lead to an unfavorable outcome."

(China Daily European Weekly 06/05/2015 page16)