Brussels (dpa) - The European Commission launched an investigation Thursday into electronic bikes imported from China, after European manufacturers complained that artificially low prices were making it hard to compete. China is the European Union‘s largest supplier of goods, but the bloc believes that some of its exports illegally undercut European prices, in part as a result of state subsidies. In response, Brussels has imposed heavy import duties on various Chinese products.Chinese e-bikes are "flooding the EU at an alarming rate and artificially low prices," Moreno Fioravanti of the European Bicycle Manufacturers Association (EBMA) said Thursday, adding that exporters "benefit from massive subsidies.""European bicycle manufacturers cannot compete with the scale of state-sponsored dumping," he added, noting: "Some European e-bike manufacturers have recently gone bankrupt due to unfair competition from China."Last year, China imported more than 430,000 e-bikes into the European Union, according to the EBMA, with that figure set to rise to 800,000 this year. It says that 70 per cent of all e-bikes imported into Europe are Chinese.The European e-bike market is estimated to be worth around 1.85 billion euros (2.19 billion dollars).
