Brussels, Belgium (AHN) - The European trade commissioner has again delayed plans to reform the EU's trade defense policy to protect member nations from foreign competitors, such as China, dumping goods at below-cost prices.

According to reports Monday a proposal to overhaul the EU's anti dumping rules, which had been shelved last year and was supposed to be released this month, has been shelved again.

The issue of foreign competitors threatening domestic manufacturers has been muddied in Europe. Because while some manufacturers kept plants in Europe many European companies that - like their American counterparts - have closed plants and fired workers in their own countries to send manufacturing jobs, or out source production, to cheap wage countries such as China don't want to pay import tariffs on their products.

According to EU Observer, a prime example of what fuels that conflict occurred last summer.

The commission extended import duties on environmentally friendly light bulbs made in China after being pressured by the German firm Osram, which produces most of its bulbs in Europe. However, Dutch firm Philips, which manufactures large quantities of bulbs in China, had asked for an end of the duties.

The commission can protect European firms from unfair competition by imposing anti-dumping duties on foreign countries trying to dump products on the EU market at below-cost prices.

But conflicting needs - such as the one last summer - caused European Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson to say he is shelving the proposal this time because member states can't agree on how to respond to cheap imports from countries such as China.

EU Observer reports that Mandelson has said he believes it is important to reform anti-dumping duties because a number of EU firms have shifted production abroad to cut costs and the anti-dumping tariffs that are being slapped on products from non-European countries are increasingly hitting products from those companies.

But that really has led to deep divisions among member states on how to deal with those cheap imports from countries such as China.

These are some of the primary reasons for that division.

Anti-dumping proposals were supposed to fine tune trade defense mechanisms designed to protect European producers against unfair competition from emerging economies that export goods at prices below what it cost to produce them, or give exporters internationally illegal subsidies or flood a market with "large and sudden" shipments of one product, according to EurActiv.

However, some EU nations can't agree on what new anti-dumping rules should be because free marketers, such as Britain, the Netherlands and Sweden have different economic concerns than manufacturing nations such as Italy, France, Germany, Spain and Poland.

The manufacturing nations argue that imports of under-priced goods from Asia threatens their economies by putting their industries at risk from such unfair competition and consequently puts the jobs of thousands of citizens at risk.

Manufacturing nations have led a call for the past two years to reform anti-dumping rules by strengthening them and implementing other safeguards to protect their businesses and workers.

But the manufacturing nations are also worried that there is a risk to reforming the anti-dumping rules.

Manufacturing nations worry that EU companies that manufacture or source goods in cheap labor countries such as China might find a way to use reforming EU trade defenses to advantage by watering down the existing safeguards against dumping, EurActiv reports.

In the meantime, the EU nations with companies that have shifted production to cheap labor Asian nations don't want their companies to pay anti-dumping tariffs when they import their products into the EU.