BEIJING - The Ministry of Commerce said Saturday that the European Union should avoid abusing trade remedy measures, after the latest decision by the European Commission to impose anti-dumping duties on some Chinese steel products.

The European Commission Saturday decided to impose provisional anti-dumping duties on imports of seamless steel tubes from China for six months.

China is highly concerned about the increasing steel trade protectionism from the EU, and hopes the EU will strictly respect relevant World Trade Organization rules, the ministry said in a statement on its website.

The "analogue country" investigation method used by the EU, a practice using price data in a third country to calculate the value of products from a non-market economy country, is unfair and unreasonable and has seriously damaged the interests of Chinese companies, it said.

It reiterated that the root cause of Europe's steel industry woes was not imports from China but weak economic growth.