yeah, unfortunately he can still raise the duties up to the 40-60% range from August through to december if he wants, then it's up to the nation states to vote to keep the measures for the next 5 years, or abandon them entirely.
I have a horrible suspicion the guy is going to push through the higher rates in August, then the countries will vote to abandon them in december... unless the EU manufacturers manage to convince their countries to vote in favour of keeping the measure if they've seen a big upsurge in orders... at which point we're damned if we do, damned if we don't as our only hope of dumping the tarrifs would be if we could show that the bottom had fallen out of the installation market in that period, but obviously that would mean that we'd all have had to endure 4 months of reduced sales and uncertainty again.
The worst part of that I think is going to be persuading people to buy a system during that period when there's a chance that the tariff will be dropped in a few months and the panel prices might then drop by 40% (I know in reality the prices won't rise by 40%, more like 10-20% as the manufacturers will take a hit on it, but that'll be the perception).
So it could be like a self fulfilling prophecy that the bottom will fall out of the market in the autumn because customers hold off to wait and see if the tariff gets dumped in dec.
Best case probably would be that either we get a negotiated settlement, or stick with the current import tariff.
The problem could be that the chinese companies will do the same analysis I've just done, and work out that they only need to ride out the tariffs for a few months, wait for the market in europe to implode for those months, then laugh as the EU member countries tell the commissioner to abandon the tariffs in dec.
Best solution all round would be for the commissioner to end up being forced out of his job one way or another...