1.Without prejudice to Article 7, the Union investigation procedure shall be implemented before any safeguard measure is applied.
2.Using as a basis the factors referred to in Article 9, the investigation shall seek to determine whether imports of the product in question are causing or threatening to cause serious injury to the Union producers concerned.
3.The following definitions shall apply:
(a)‘serious injury’ means a significant overall impairment in the position of Union producers;
(b)‘threat of serious injury’ means serious injury that is clearly imminent;
(c)‘Union producers’ means the producers as a whole of like or directly competing products operating within the territory of the Union, or those whose collective output of like or directly competing products constitutes a major proportion of the total Union production of those products.