The European Council approved on Dec. 20 revised rules for the "use of hired road vehicles for goods transport," with the European Parliament expected to OK them shortly. The measures clarify rules, harmonize the legal framework for lorry drivers and ease the restrictions on the use of such vehicles, the council said. EU member states have to incorporate the new provisions into their national legislation 14 months after the directive is entered into force.

The Court of Odense, Denmark, fined bunker fuel supplier Dan-Bunkering over $4.5 million for violating European Union sanctions when it sold 172,000 tons of jet fuel for use in Syria between 2015 and 2017, the EU Sanctions blog reported Dec. 18. The court also fined Dan-Bunkering's parent company, Bunker Holding, over $600,000 and sentenced Bunker Holding's CEO to four months in prison for the sanctions violations. Authorities seized over $2.3 million in profits from Dan-Bunkering. The court said the company intentionally violated the sanctions since it must have known that the Russian military would use the jet fuel in Syria. The sales were made to two Russian entities in 33 transactions.

The United Kingdom and Australia inked a massive trade deal, marking the first one negotiated completely by the U.K. itself since its departure from the European Union, the Department for International Trade announced. The deal, officially signed by International Trade Secretary Anne-Marie Trevelyan at a Dec. 16 ceremony, is expected to boost bilateral trade by over $13.3 billion, create new work and travel opportunities for citizens of both nations, and eliminate tariffs.

The European Commission initiated a review of the tariff-rate quotas on 26 different steel products, it said in a Dec. 17 notice. The commission will look into whether any adjustments to the TRQs are necessary due to "unduly crowding-out effects" and whether it needs to update the list of developing World Trade Organization member states that need to be excluded from the scope of the TRQs based on their most recent import levels. So long as a developing nation's share of EU imports of the given steel product doesn't exceed 3%, no safeguard measure can be applied to this product from a developing country, the notice said. The review investigation will be wrapped up by June 30, 2022, at the latest, the commission said. The covered merchandise includes electrical sheets, tin mill products, rebar, stainless bars and gas pipes.

The UK Trade Policy Observatory penned a new report laying out steps the UK can take to deliver plurilateral trade agreements at the World Trade Organization. The Department for International Trade-commissioned paper discusses the current state of play with plurilaterals and how to harness the potential of such groups, while concluding with a set of recommendations. The report points out how plurilaterals are a clear way to revitalize negotiations at the WTO, but that "scheduling is not first-best" for new plurilaterals that address issues not covered by the WTO. "A work programme in the WTO to define rules/criteria/procedures on how such OPAs can be annexed to the WTO will increase the prospects that WTO Members will be willing to pursue plurilateral co-operation inside -- as opposed to outside -- the WTO," the report said.

The European Union is reopening an antidumping review into tartaric acid from China to comply with the European Court of Justice's Dec. 3 ruling, the European Commission said. The ruling concerned the commission's determination to find the normal value of tartaric acid in the review based on costs of production in Argentina, whereas in the initial investigation, the commission found normal value based on Argentinian domestic sales prices. The result was an increase in the antidumping duty for two exporting producers, Changmao Biochemical Engineering Co. and Ninghai Organic Chemical Factory, who saw their rates jump from 10.1% to 13.1% and 4.7% to 8.3%, respectively.

The European Union has launched a helpdesk for importers and exporters to find new market opportunities, potential partners and answers to questions on requirements and procedures in the EU and the Eastern Partnership countries, the European Commission said. The Eastern Partnership countries are Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine.

The European Union is imposing an antidumping duty on certain utility scale steel wind towers from China, the European Commission said in a Dec. 15 implementing regulation. The investigation was initiated following a complaint from the European Wind Tower Association, which alleged that these towers were harming the domestic European industry. After looking into the matter, the commission deemed this allegation is correct and that a corrective antidumping duty was warranted.

The European Union initiated a pair of anti-circumvention investigations into its antidumping and countervailing duty orders on certain woven and/or stitched glass fiber fabrics from China and Egypt, consigned from Turkey, the European Commission said. The investigation will cover certain woven and/or stitched glass fiber fabrics consigned from Turkey, whether declared as originating in Turkey or not. The investigations were initiated after TECH-FAB Europe requested them in November, alleging that assembly operations in Turkey substantially increased after the imposition of the orders.

The United Kingdom is making changes to the structure and format of the U.K. Sanctions List, with the alterations set to take effect in February 2022, the Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation said. OFSI issued a guidance to users of the list to anticipate the changes. The amendments include data standardization to drop duplications, unnecessary punctuation and improve consistency; and new fields designed to increase the detail and structure of the data. Some of these new fields include "name type" that shows whether a name is a primary name, primary name variation or alias; "passport additional information"; and "National Identifier additional information," which will describe the source of a number that is listed in a national identity card, for instance. The format changes also include alterations to some field names to make their purpose clearer. An example of this change includes changing the "Individual, Entity, Ship - Vessel" field to "Ship" to align with the terminology in the Sanctions and Anti-Money Laundering Act 2018.