Not Yet Law: Reading the EU Mower Duty Correctly

On 21 October 2026 the European Commission sent interested parties its General Disclosure Document in case AD745, proposing definitive anti-dumping duties of 45.6% to 53.3% on robot lawn mowers originating in China. Within a day the range was circulating as though it were a price list.

It is not. No regulation has been published in the Official Journal. The statutory deadline for a definitive measure is 19 January 2027, and comments on the disclosure are due by 5 November. Until a regulation appears, nothing is collected at the border.

That distinction is not pedantry. It separates two different questions: what might the duty be, and what binds a purchase order placed today. The second question has answers already.

The proposal lists 45.6% for one sampled exporter, 53.3% for the other, 47.0% for other cooperating Chinese companies and 53.3% for all remaining Chinese-origin imports. It is tempting to read the spread as a ranking of behaviour. It is not.

Article 9(4) of the basic anti-dumping regulation requires the duty to be less than the dumping margin where a lesser duty would remove the injury. So the operative number is the injury margin, and the dumping margin only caps it. That is why the exporter with the higher dumping margin, 66.0%, sits at the lower duty of 45.6%, while the one at 59.7% sits at 53.3%.

The practical consequence: if you are preparing comments for 5 November, attack the injury calculation — price undercutting, volume effects, cost build-up — not the dumping finding. The dumping number is not where the arithmetic that hurts you lives.

The Commission follows the method it has used in several Chinese high-technology cases: it finds significant market distortion, declines to use domestic costs, and constructs normal value from an analogue country — Malaysia. For electronic sensors, where Malaysia has no comparable complete-machine production, the benchmark reportedly comes from an EU producer's adjusted cost.

The injury side is where the range is really set. As assessed in the disclosure, Chinese-origin share of the EU market rose from close to 50% in 2022 to 79.2% in the investigation period, while the EU industry's share fell from 24.3% to 10.1%, with profitability turning negative and price undercutting of 20% to 30%. Those figures are the complainant's case as recorded by the Commission, not yet confirmed in an Official Journal act — but they drive the injury margin, which is why they are the ones worth contesting.

Whether you cooperated. Article 9(6) caps the duty for exporters that made themselves known but were not sampled at the weighted average margin of the sampled parties. Thirty-nine Chinese companies returned the questionnaire. Cooperating puts you in the 47.0% bracket; not cooperating puts you at the 53.3% country-wide rate. Nothing about the product changes this.

Whether your invoice names a specific exporter. An individual rate is available only against a commercial invoice corresponding to a specific responding company. Without compliant documentation, the country-wide rate applies regardless of who actually produced the goods. For a brand buying from a factory that did not respond, this is the single most expensive paperwork detail in the file.

Whether origin genuinely changed. Duty attaches to Chinese origin, so production elsewhere changes the answer — if the transformation is real. Assembly and re-routing without substantial processing invite an anti-circumvention investigation that can extend the measure rather than escape it. This is a manufacturing question, but it is decided on documents.

Whether you are in scope at all. The case covers mowers completing the job without direct operator control — CN ex 8433 11 10, TARIC 8433 11 10 10 — including the dock, boundary wire and wire-free alternatives. Requests to exclude ride-on units above 300 kg and multi-function yard platforms were rejected. A commercial machine does not fall outside by virtue of being commercial.

Article 10(1) applies definitive duties to goods entering free circulation after the measure enters into force. Retroactive collection is the exception, permitted under Article 10(4) for at most 90 days before provisional measures, and only where imports were registered, importers had a chance to comment, there is a dumping history or the importer knew or should have known, and imports rose substantially enough to undermine the remedy.

Two facts make retroactivity unlikely here. The disclosure leans against it. And no provisional duty was imposed in June 2026 — which matters on a plain reading of Article 10(4), because the 90-day window is counted back from the application of provisional measures. Remove the provisional measure and the anchor the provision was written around is gone.

That is a strong indication, not a guarantee. The registration regulation leaves the retroactivity assessment to the definitive regulation, and the Commission retains the instrument if import behaviour changes before January. Plan shipments on "probably not retroactive"; do not sign contracts on "certainly not".

A definitive regulation sets the rate, the product scope and the retroactivity position, and takes effect on publication. From that date duty is collected at the border on a CIF, duty-unpaid basis. The measure then runs for five years under Article 11(2) unless an expiry review extends it — so the decision being made now shapes European pricing until roughly 2032, not until next season.

Three clauses, while they are still cheap to negotiate: who bears the duty if it lands, and at what reference price the commercial terms reset; who carries the cost of any guarantee lodged at customs and who receives any refund or release; and an obligation on the supplier to state, in writing, the responding exporter named on the invoice and to notify any change.

The third is the one most often skipped and the one that decides whether an individual rate is available at all.

We build robotic mower platforms on an ODM basis and we are not a party to this case. What we can do is make the operational side boring: production documentation that names the correct exporter, bill-of-materials records that support an origin argument rather than merely asserting one, and a second production qualification for customers who need one.

We do not advise on whether to relocate, on what to say in a submission, or on which rate you will receive. Those belong to your trade counsel. What we can do is make sure the paperwork does not cost you a bracket.