The EU's trade commissioner has pledged to reform Brussels' harmful anti-dumping rules - which penalise imports that are deemed to be " too cheap" - to take account of the fact that many of these imports are in fact produced by European companies with factories abroad. There is also the small matter that European consumers actually benefit from low-price imports, as anyone who has bought cheap Chinese shoes can testify.

A review is great news, then - but don't rejoice too fast. Our enlightened representatives in Brussels have today voted to slap duties of 16.5% on shoes made in China and 10% on footwear from Vietnam. The extra duties will last for two years - less than the five years that Mandelson was proposing, but more than free-traders such as Britain, which opposed the anti-dumping duties altogether, wanted.

Mandelson would doubtless argue that EU politics required him to propose these harmful duties. Perhaps. But slapping an unfair tax on cheap Chinese and Vietnamese shoes is an odd way to launch a liberalising reform of Europe's nonsensical anti-dumping rules.