- “Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you very much for adding this point to the agenda and for allowing the possibility to the Commission to explain and present the proposal. As you said at the envy is the lead committee in the in the European Parliament, but you will be also providing an opinion. And as I will underline, of course, it's very important that we move forward with this proposal and with the adoption as soon as possible, because we would like to implement it from 1st January 2026. As you know, we are in the transitional period. It started in October 2025, sorry, 2023 and it will last until the end of this year. We always said from the beginning that the transitional period was a period to learn not only us, the Commission, but also the other institutions, but of course, more importantly, importers, exporters in third countries. And also to understand how the Cbam will apply with financial obligations from 2026. We always said that we wanted to simplify the cbam based on the experience in the transitional period, and we also wanted to strengthen the application of the Cbam. This is why you saw the Commission adopted a proposal on the 26th of February as part of the first omnibus on simplification, including the Cbam simplifications. And this is the purpose of the of the, of the meeting of today and the purpose of these amendments that Mr. Chair referred to. But I would also like to say a few words about the other aspect that I mentioned, which is also, of course, the importance of strengthening sebum.”
Extension of the EU Emissions Trading Scheme · Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM)
- “They always concern our concern with the impact on trade. Although we all know that this is not a trade measure, this is an environmental measure, but of course it may have an impact on trade. And for that reason, reducing the administrative burden is one of the main objectives and something that we need to do as quickly as possible. So the simplifications in the form of a new threshold will reduce the administrative burden on all the stakeholders. And the current threshold of €150 per consignment was clearly very low, was linked to the threshold in the customs legislation. I think you had a discussion on the customs reform previously this afternoon. And as you know, this threshold is proposed to be to be eliminated. But in any case, for the cbam purpose, it's clearly very low. This is why after analysis of the data, trade data, but also data in the civil registry, we came to the conclusion and I gave you the numbers that an annual cumulative threshold of around 50 tonnes would still cover 99% of the emissions and the mass imported into the EU. But at the same time, we will get rid or will reduce the administrative burden with implementation of C-band for around 90% of the importance. In other words, around 180,000 uh importers would not would not need to comply with all the obligations while still achieving our targets. And while still, of course, making sure that we don't open the door for circumvention. We can discuss about the threshold. You know, that we published also a staff working document which analyses different possibilities for thresholds.”
Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) · EU policy on custom fee on non-EU imports
- “This is why we need to adapt. So we thought that and this is a possibility for the commission. And this is not a gift to third countries. It's a simplification that if we have accurate data and we can assess approximations or values for carbon pricing, we can also publish a list of default values for carbon pricing. Finally, let me talk about 2026 because you possibly saw that in 2026, the obligation to buy certificates will be postponed to February 2027, so no quarterly obligation. Why we are not delaying the application of Cbam. Let's be clear. What we are saying is that the obligations to buy certificates for 2026 will move to 2027, as the reporting will move from May 27th to August or September 2027. And why? Because importers and exporters need to know the final methodology, need to know the default values. Need to know the benchmarks. Need to calculate the carbon pricing in order to do good estimations for 2026. So we thought that giving some sort of flexibility in 2026 would also be a good idea. Finally, and I'm exceeding my time. Sorry for that, Mr. Chair. Um, we count on you to progress quickly with this proposal. The council is already discussing. They want to have a position in May. We understand that you also want to have a vote in the plenary of May. So that would be great to launch. Of course, the the necessary, uh. Discussions between the three institutions before the summer and to reach an agreement also before the summer. Thank you very much.”
Extension of the EU Emissions Trading Scheme · Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) · Climate efforts
- “For example, the penalties will be applied by member states. That was a point raised by one of you. The convention will be monitored by the Commission on the basis of customs data. In the customs declaration. There is an obligation, of course, to say the CN code. And as you know, the Seaborn application relies on the seaborn, on the seaborn numbers. And then the customs authorities will be collecting that data, will be sending that data to the civil registry and the Commission, and also the national competent authorities in member states will have access to that data, and we will be able to monitor the threshold nearly on real time, on or on the basis of nearly daily, daily basis. So that will allow us to check when someone exceeds the threshold. At that moment, we will notify the national competent authorities. We will also now And communicate to the customs authorities, because the importer will need to ask for an authorisation to be a declarant and unlike this is done, the important will not be able to import seaborn goods anymore. So this will be monitored by the Commission and this information will be shared, of course, with the national competent authorities, who will communicate with the importers and who will be applying the penalties where necessary.”
Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) · EU policy on custom fee on non-EU imports
- “You possibly read the Clean industrial Deal. You also saw the Steel and Metals Action Plan, which already refers to three important issues that have been raised by the EU cbam industry. One is, of course, the concern on exports, and the other two are circumvention and resource shuffling, or the risk with circumvention and resource shuffling. And the other one, of course, is the impact on downstream goods. This is why, as mentioned in the in in the action plan, the commission will come in this quarter with a communication on exports and how to deal with the risk of carbon leakage with exports of the seaborne goods. And also, we announced that there will be a legal proposal at the end of the year in Q4 covering the two other aspects, the Anti-circumvention or the convention resource shuffling concerned, but also the downstream goods. So coming back to the simplifications, what we learn from the transitional period is that a big number of the imports, in terms of emissions, in terms of mass, are done by a small number of importance. We can more or less, uh, summarize this like 90% of the importance import less than 1% of the CO2 emissions in the seaborne goods, or also in terms of mass, they import less than 1%. This clearly please for the possibilities for reducing the administrative burden, which is an important simplification of would be an important simplification not only for importers, but also, of course for the national customs, sorry, national competent authorities of Cbam, but also for the exporters and producers in third countries.”
Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) · Carbon leakage support
- “And also, of course, to surrender, to buy and surrender the certificates. That's also important in relation, for example, to calculate the carbon price, because in many systems where there is a carbon price in place, could be an ETS or could be a carbon tax. Many countries said that they cannot make the calculation correctly, for example, until the middle or the middle of the of the year after. So April was too early for them. So this is why we are proposing proposing to to delay also the reporting. But that has no impact, of course, on the obligations. And we are coming with a new idea, which is also the idea of default values for carbon price. That will be a huge simplification on many producers in third countries and also for the importers. And that also will give certainty to the importers how to calculate also the number of certificates. We are working on an implementing regulation to determine the rules for assessing the carbon price, the carbon price to be assigned to the goods. As you can imagine, this is not going to be easy in the same way that for emissions we are relying in the ETS on installation level. And this is also the case everywhere. For the carbon price is the same. They calculate the carbon price at the level of the installation. But we are importing goods. We are not importing the whole production of an installation.”
Extension of the EU Emissions Trading Scheme · Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) · EU policy on custom fee on non-EU imports
- “Maybe in the future if there is an expansion, for example, to chemicals that could have an impact. But for the moment, we don't think that really the impact will be will be considerable. So we think that for the moment, that is not part of the discussion. That's what I can say as far as we know. And on the other hand, I think it can be made clear that, of course, that this is not a tariff. This is something else, not only because of the objectives, but also in how it has been designed up. Mr. Coles, besides referring to the threshold, he also referred to what are the most, uh, sectors or the sectors where they are most import. I can say that iron steel by far are the sectors where we have more imports, then followed by fertilizers and cement and finally aluminium. The imports of electricity and hydrogen are very residual at this moment. However, the decision was to take them into account because we can consider that in the future, because also of the strategy of the European Union to depend more and more on electricity and on hydrogen, and because we want to foster green electricity and green hydrogen. The decision was also to take them into account, but still, an item for sure are the most intense traded goods of the seaborn imported goods. There were a lot of points, or some of you raised concerns about circumvention and how the commission intends to apply the threshold.”
Low-carbon hydrogen · Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM)
- “You also saw that we amended the rules for circumvention or Anti-circumvention, because we wanted to cover also the new the new threshold. And as I said before, we will be working on a legal proposal by the end of the year, which will be covering the risk of resource shuffling, but also the risk of circumvention. And we are also working on a strategy anti-circumvention or an anti-circumvention strategy. So all this and this together, of course, with member States, we will be monitoring the member states, apply the rules in the same way that there are no loopholes depending on in which country you are importing the goods. And this, of course, will be the rule of the European Commission. There was a point about Northern Ireland and the UK. Cbam does not apply, of course, to the goods produced in Northern Ireland. You mentioned electricity because it's under the ETS. I think there is only one producer in Northern Ireland or exporter, sorry, one exporter in Northern Ireland of seaborne goods, which is a cement producer, but there are no exports of steel and aluminum and the rest of the goods. Of course, cbam will continue or will apply to imported goods from GB or from a third country via Northern Ireland. Ideally we should include, of course, cbam also in the protocol in the Windsor, in the annex two of the Windsor framework, in order to ensure that also the customs authorities in Northern Ireland will be cooperating with the implementation of the of the Cbam.”
Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) · EU-UK relations · EU policy on custom fee on non-EU imports
- “But as you know, also the UK is working on the introduction of a Cbam. So there are some incognitos we are aware of that. That's something that we need to clarify. We would like to clarify before the end of the year. So to make sure that there are no loopholes with the importation of C-band goods via Northern Ireland, and of course we will apply to the UK, we will discount the carbon price paid in the UK. We will take into account, of course, the actual emissions in the in the UK. Um, Mr. Langer, you also refer to ETS not being changed while we are changing Cbam. Uh, we don't think this should be a, should be a problem, uh, as you see. And that again reinforces the idea of why a threshold of 50 tonnes by keeping a low threshold, that means in terms of value, we are exempting something like €4,000. It's really a low value per importers. We don't think that this should have an impact on the on the ETS as applied. But of course that's something that we will be also analysing by the end of the year. I forgot to mention before, and I think this is important. And that links to your third question about we didn't know on the 11th of February that the Commission will be coming with this. We knew this was coming because we knew that we had to report by the end of this year about the implementation of Cbam.”
Extension of the EU Emissions Trading Scheme · Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) · EU-UK relations
- “Well, first of all, thank you very much for your welcome to the proposal and for your nice words about about the proposal. Um, there was a question raised by Mrs. Karlsbro with respect to tariffs and possible discussions with President Trump. I have to say that I have not heard Mr. Trump referring to this event yet. He was referring to the VAT. For example, he has referred, of course, to tariffs, but not to the cbam. Maybe because he didn't discover yet, but or maybe because it will apply from 2026. But I think what is clear is that, of course, C-band in the way that you have designed Cbam, it's not a tariff. It doesn't work like a tariff. It's not an import tax either. Unlike, for example, in the UK, that it will be an import tax or a green import tax in the case of the European Union. Of course, we decided to go for a model which mirrors how the ETS applies. So it would be difficult to say that the EU is applying a certain level percentage of cbam because Cbam applies to companies, it doesn't apply to countries. So there will be of course default values per countries. But that's something different. But of course it takes into account the carbon intensity of the different producers in third countries according to our estimations, and because of the goods, because of the number of exports from the EU. The impact of C-band on the US is not one of the most meaningful ones.”
Extension of the EU Emissions Trading Scheme · Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) · EU-US trade relations
- “And that, of course, would also cover the possibilities for simplifications. However, listening to the industry and listening to the clean industrial deal, we were aware of the fact that the sooner the better with the simplifications and this is what we decided or the Commission decided to come with this proposal only on simplifications at the very beginning and as part of the omnibus of the omnibus one. Um, Mr. Shaheen, I think he's left. Thanks a lot for putting pressure on the committee in order to have a vote as as soon as possible. And just finally to close, uh, we count on you again. And thanks again for your support. We count on you, uh, in order to progress as quickly as possible. Because it will be very important that there is an adoption of this proposal before the end of the year. As you know, we are working on a number of implementing regulations, for example, on verifications, but also, for example, on the carbon price. And many of those implemented regulations will have to rely on the final regulations, even regulations, taking into account also many of the changes that we are proposing here. So the sooner the better, the sooner. We have also an adoption of this proposal on simplification and the amendment of the regulation. The sooner we will be able to come also with the other implementing regulations. Thank you very much.”
Extension of the EU Emissions Trading Scheme · Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM)
- “So let's clarify one thing first. The threshold applies to the four combined in a in a combination way to the four main sectors. So no threshold for hydrogen. No threshold for electricity. And the threshold applies in combination to the four. That means that if an importer is importing steel and aluminum, 50 tonnes covers all the importations. So it's not 50 tonnes per steel, it's not 30 tonnes per year for aluminium. Second, and very important, those who import less do not have to comply with the obligations to monitor and report the emissions, and to buy carbon certificates. Those who exceed the threshold, they will have to comply from the first stone. So there is no de minimis for everyone. It's only for those who are really below. And this is why it's also important that the threshold is not sufficiently high. First, because that would reduce a lot the application of the Cbam. You are referring to 250 tonnes only covering, still covering 97% of the importations in terms of mass, in terms of CO2 emissions. That's true. But the possibilities or the incentives to circumvent are much higher, because also the threshold will determine a higher number of emissions and a higher number of. Cbam adjustment that would be out of the of the scope. The convention, like the implementation, will be monitored by the commission. You know, because you voted in the Trilogues two years ago or three years ago that you wanted a model, which is a hybrid model where the implementation is shared by the Commission, mostly by the Commission, but also by member states.”
Extension of the EU Emissions Trading Scheme · Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) · Carbon leakage support
- “We think that by relying to an average also of those who are the importers into the EU would be a better way to do to do things. We are also amending or changing the obligations to buy certificates on a quarterly basis. We realized that the percentage this is the 80% rule combined with the obligation to or the possibility to repurchase up to one third of the carbon certificates every year, and also the time limit of the two years to use the carbon certificates. We thought that, uh, the current uh, 80%, based on default values could give high numbers because we didn't take into account, of course, actual emissions. We didn't take into account the existence of the free allowances in the ETS from 26 to 2034, or because, for example, we didn't take into account carbon pricing. This is why we are proposing, while keeping the obligation to buy civil certificates on a quarterly basis. We are also reducing the burden or the obligation to buy all those certificates. We are also moving the reporting obligations from May every year. We are proposing to go to August. I can already anticipate that there are some calling for September. August is the holidays month. The idea is to be more in line also with the review in the ETS, where they also moved the obligations from April to September, for example, for the surrendering of ETS certificates. So by moving to August or moving to September, we give more time to calculate the emissions, to verify the emissions, which, as you know, will be obligatory from 2026.”
Extension of the EU Emissions Trading Scheme · Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) · Climate efforts
- “I know that some of you would like to have a higher threshold, but we had to think carefully about the balance between, uh, reducing the administrative burden, keeping or covering a high number of emissions. And in terms of, of mass and at the same time avoiding opening the possibilities for circumvention. And let's not forget, of course, that there is also another impact, which is in terms of revenues, although, as you know, the Cbam doesn't have as an objective, of course, to to raise revenues, but this should be considered overall. Besides that, of course, we consider that for those who still have to declare and have to comply with the civil obligations, there were still possibilities for reducing the administrative burden. And as I said before, also the possibility to reduce the impact on trade. And I think this is something that, of course, is of concern for you. We listen to importers, but we listen also to producers in third countries. We know there are problems with the methodology, with monitoring, reporting, verifying emissions. And this is why we came also with a battery of other additional simplifications covering from, for example, the authorisations of importers up to, for example, the reporting obligations. I will give you just an example of some of those simplifications that we think would reduce, of course, a lot the administrative burden. One of them, for example, is how we will set the default values up. So far we were relying on an average or I mean, there were different criteria, but one of them was an average of the EU producers.”
Extension of the EU Emissions Trading Scheme · Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM)