General Court (Sixth Chamber) 11 September 2024, T-2/22 (Sveza Verkhnyaya Sinyachikha NAO and Others v European Commission.)

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The General Court (Sixth Chamber) dismissed an action by Russian birch plywood producers (Sveza Group) seeking annulment of Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2021/1930, which imposed a definitive anti-dumping duty of 15.8% on their exports to the EU. The Court upheld the Commission's findings that: (i) the applicants and their related distributor Sveza-Les did not form a single economic entity on the export market, justifying a downward adjustment of the export price under Article 2(10)(i) of Regulation (EU) 2016/1036 for commissions paid, while no equivalent adjustment to normal value was warranted for domestic sales; (ii) dividends redistributed from a producer to the related distributor and unsubstantiated management cost allocations were properly excluded from SG&A costs under Article 2(6); (iii) square birch plywood was validly included in the product concerned and no market segmentation analysis was required; (iv) the Commission's use of Eurostat data to determine import volumes and prices was reasonable; and (v) imports from Ukraine and Belarus, raw material cost fluctuations, and contractual obligations of Union producers did not attenuate the causal link between the dumped imports and material injury to the Union industry under Article 3(7).AI