The European Commission has approved an agreement between the European Electronic Components Manufacturers Association (EECA) and the Electronic Industries Association of Japan (EIAJ) that could speed up lengthy disputes over alleged Japanese undercutting of European product prices by the dumping of chips in the European markets. The agreement covers dynamic random access memories (DRAMs) and flash erasable programmable read-only memories (Flash EROPMs). It provides for the creation of a database to which companies will be required to supply information about costs of production, home market prices and export prices. The data will only be accessible by the European Commission and Japanese anti-dumping authorities once an anti-dumping procedure is initiated. The agreement does not break antitrust laws as the information will not be available to the member companies. The commission also said that neither the associations nor the companies would exchange data amongst themselves or discuss price development.
