Article 106: Preliminary Investigation of Subsidies Causing Injury, Nullification, Impairment or Serious Prejudice

  1.         An application for an investigation may be made in writing by or on behalf of a domestic industry to the national authority where the industry has reason to believe that a subsidy referred to in Article 105 has been granted or is maintained by another Member State and has caused injury, or resulted in nullification, impairment or serious prejudice to its interests.
  1.         An application under paragraph 1 shall include sufficient information about the existence of a subsidy and, if possible, its amount, injury and a causal link between the subsidised products and the alleged injury.
  1.         An application to initiate an investigation shall be considered to have been made by or on behalf of a domestic industry if it is supported by those domestic producers whose collective output constitutes more than 50 per cent of the total production of the like product by that proportion of the domestic industry expressing support for or opposition to the application.  The investigation shall not be initiated where the domestic producers expressly supporting the application account for less than 25 per cent of the total production of the like product produced by the domestic industry.
  1.         Upon receipt of a request for such an investigation, the authority shall examine the application and determine, on the basis of the facts available, whether to initiate an investigation. If the authority decides to initiate an investigation, it shall issue a public notice to that effect, invite the concerned Member State, other interested Member States and interested parties to submit required information and comments.
  1.         An investigation initiated pursuant to paragraph 1 shall be deemed to be a preliminary investigation. The authority shall inform the concerned Member State and all interested parties of the results of the investigation.
  1.         For the purpose of this Part, “like product” shall be interpreted to mean a product which is identical, i.e., alike in all respects to the product under consideration, or in the absence of such a product, another product, which, although not alike in all respects, has characteristics closely resembling those of the product under consideration.