Meanwhile, Germany is examining options including trade protections to shield local solar manufacturers from falling global prices, a government document seen by Reuters showed. "Tariffs are not a good answer to the current challenges in the European solar industry," said Gunter Erfurt, Board Director at industry group SolarPower Europe, whose members include producers, large buyers and companies involved in installation. "Instead of sanctioning the entire industry through tariffs, we must incentivize solar installations that originate from resilient European solar production. This way, the deployment of solar energy can continue undisturbed while the European solar manufacturing can grow steadily," said Erfurt, who is CEO of Swiss solar cell maker Meyer Burger. But industry fears restricting Chinese supplies would cause a repeat of the 2013-2018 period, when Europe's solar energy installations dipped temporarily - coinciding with EU limits on tariff-free imports of Chinese solar panels and cells.

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Persons: Gunter Erfurt, ", Meyer Burger, Kate Abnett, Philip Blenkinsop, Riham Alkousaa, Hugh Lawson Organizations: Meyer Burger Technology, European Commission, Reuters, EU, Thomson Locations: China, Brussels, Europe, Germany, Erfurt, Swiss, EU