Oct. 12 (Bloomberg) -- China is poised to ask a World Trade Organization panel of judges to rule on the legality of European Union anti-dumping duties on screws and bolts, a Chinese commerce ministry official said.

Consultations under the trade organization’s framework haven’t resolved the dispute, said the official, who wouldn’t be named ahead of an official announcement. The case is China’s first complaint against the EU at the WTO.

China faces trade disputes with the EU and the U.S., the two biggest markets for Chinese products, amid concern that the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression will lead to a global slide into protectionism. China filed a WTO complaint last month after President Barack Obama imposed duties on Chinese automobile tires.

“China has to take stronger positions against increasing protectionism,” said Tu Xinquan, the deputy head of the China WTO Studies Center at the University of International Business and Economics in Beijing. The EU tariff is “mostly hurting small Chinese businesses and the government needs to protect them during the financial crisis.”

The WTO is yet to receive a request from China for a panel to be set up in the fastener case and can’t comment until it does, an official at the trade body said in Geneva today. An EU trade official in Brussels declined to comment.

The EU imposed the five-year tariffs on Chinese iron and steel fasteners in January and China asked for consultations on July 31.

Fasteners, used for everything from car parts to furniture, are made in the EU by companies such as Italy’s Fontana Luigi SpA and imports from China were worth about 575 million euros ($847 million) in 2007.

--Li Yanping, Jennifer Freedman. Editors: Paul Panckhurst, Michael Dwyer.

To contact Bloomberg News staff for this story: Li Yanping in Beijing at +86-10-6649-7568 or yli16@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: October 12, 2009 07:05 EDT