The European Commission voiced hope on Wednesday that the United States would abandon its controversial "zeroing" method for dealing with unfairly priced imports after a ruling by the World Trade Organisation.

The European Union has launched an appeal against the method even though it won a case in October, because the original WTO panel failed to rule on some instances challenged by Brussels.

"Given the repeated WTO findings against the use of zeroing by the U.S., the Commission hopes that the US will abandon this practice and fall into line with other WTO Members," EU trade spokesman Peter Power said in a statement.