Yingli Green Energy Announced Withdrawal from EU Price Undertaking

Yingli Green Energy announced its withdrawal from the European Union (“EU”) Price Undertaking agreement (the “UT agreement”).

In December 2013, the Council of the European Union adopted prior findings of the European Commission and imposed definitive anti-dumping and anti-subsidy duties on crystalline silicon photovoltaic, or CSPV, wafers, cells, and modules imported from China. In parallel, in August 2013 the European Commission accepted the UT agreement whereby certain Chinese exporters of PV products would limit their exports of solar panels to the EU to a certain quota and set prices above a fixed Minimum Import Price (“MIP”), in exchange for the EU agreeing to forgo the imposition of anti-dumping and anti-subsidy duties. Chinese exporters of PV products that did not accept the UT agreement would face anti-dumping and anti-subsidy duties, which would have been 35.5% and 6.3%, respectively, for Yingli Green Energy. Therefore, at the time the Company chose to accept and participate in the UT agreement and has since complied with its terms and conditions. 

However, given that the average selling prices of PV modules in all major EU markets have continued to decline commensurate with the significantly shrinking market for PV products in recent years, the Company believes that the current MIP no longer accurately reflects the current market price environment. The Company believes that its continued acceptance of and participation in the UT agreement would harm fair competition in the market. The Company also is of the view that the UT agreement and its current MIP have the potential to hamper the development of the PV industry and to hurt PV consumers in the EU.

“Since accepting the UT agreement in 2013, we have been committed to fair trade and robust market competition by participating in the price undertaking. However, after carefully reviewing our EU operations and the current market situation, we have decided to withdraw from the UT agreement. We remain committed to our European customers and intend to continue to serve them with high-quality, reliable products through means that are feasible and available to us after the withdrawal from the UT agreement,” commented Mr. Liansheng Miao, Chairman and CEO of Yingli Green Energy.