Nearly a quarter of imports into the European Union are showing potentially worrying trends, the bloc’s chief trade enforcement officer has told MEPs. Denis Redonnet said goods of Chinese origin were the main driver of the increases identified by the Commission’s import barometer, with machinery, textiles, basic metals and chemicals among the sectors facing sustained and abnormal growth.
The assessment was made during a presentation on EU trade-defence activity to the European Parliament’s trade committee on 1 October. It is a warning about patterns in import data, not a finding that a particular producer, product or country has broken trade rules.
What the monitoring is designed to show
The Commission recast its earlier import-surveillance work into an import barometer in June. It is intended to identify longer-term rises in imports that coincide with lower prices and may put pressure on EU producers. The latest results cover the period from July 2025 to June 2026 and flag 902 product codes across sectors.
The system works at a highly detailed customs-code level and draws on Eurostat trade data rather than a real-time stream. For a product code to appear, imports must meet several tests. They include a meaningful level of annual trade, growth above the recent average over one and two years, and a fall in import prices. The Commission says the purpose is to focus attention on possible pressure points, including where broad sector totals could conceal a change in a narrower product market.
That distinction matters. A flag in the barometer is not an automatic tariff, a determination of dumping or a judgment that an import is unfair. The results can change as trade flows evolve and customs data are corrected. The Commission says it will publish the analysis quarterly and seek additional information from industry, member states and specialists before deciding whether any response is warranted.
China and the trade-defence backdrop
Redonnet told the committee that China was the principal origin behind the increases of concern. The remarks come against a wider imbalance in goods trade: the EU’s deficit with China was put at €360 billion in 2025. Total EU imports that year were €2.53 trillion, of which €571 billion came from China.
The figures explain why the monitoring exercise is politically significant, but they do not turn the barometer into a measure of every import from China. Nor do they establish injury in an individual sector. A trade-defence investigation requires a separate evidential assessment, with procedures that can examine whether imported goods are dumped, subsidised or causing harm to competing EU producers.
The Commission opened 32 new trade-defence investigations in 2025, close to the previous year’s record of 33. Chemicals accounted for more than a third of the new cases. By the end of 2025, 232 trade-defence measures were in force. Redonnet said 27 new cases had already been opened in 2026, an indication of growing demand from industry for the Commission to examine complaints.
Talks are not an agreement
Alongside enforcement, Brussels has been intensifying discussions with Beijing over the goods deficit. The official’s appearance did not announce a settlement or a new import restriction. Although the Commission hopes to make progress on some form of Chinese export management during October, no such arrangement has been agreed or described as final.
The next test will be whether the barometer’s product-level alerts are supported by evidence of harm and lead to formal cases or other proportionate action. For European businesses that use imported components as well as those competing with them, that evidence-led step is important: measures intended to protect one part of the economy can raise costs or disrupt supply for another. The immediate development is therefore a sharper official warning and a more structured basis for scrutiny, rather than a new EU-China trade deal.
