circular economy,  compliance e AEO,  energie rinnovabili

CBAM: Proposal for a regulation on carbon border adjustment mechanism. The next CBAM

Febbraio 26, 2025 /

The proposal for a regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council amending Regulation (EU) 2023/956 as regards simplifying and strengthening the carbon border adjustment mechanism published on 26 febbruary 2025. Among others roots, this proposal is based on ‘The Future of European Competitiveness’,where Mario Draghi emphasised the need for Europe to create a regulatory landscape which facilitates competitiveness and resilience.

It is interesting, in a preliminary way, saying that CBAM is an environmental instrument that tackles carbon leakage by putting a carbon price on imports of the following goods: cement, iron and steel, aluminium, fertilisers, electricity and hydrogen.

In a nutshell, the main need of the proposal is the simplification of CBAM. It implies the insitution of the a new CBAM de minimis threshold, which will allow to exempt occasional importers of small quantities of CBAM goods. It is stated: “ For exempted importers, administrative costs related to the CBAM – that means all costs related to the compliance with CBAM other than the financial CBAM obligation – will be cut by almost 100%. As the majority of the exempted importers are SMEs, the CBAM simplification will contribute substantially to the Commission targets”.  Indeed, simplifying the CBAM will be key to making the mechanism work on the ground and support EU industry in its decarbonisation efforts by avoiding carbon leakage risks. Simplifying the mechanism would also be a key enabler for a potential future scope extension, notably to downstream goods.

The Commission is proposing an informed amendment to the current de minimis threshold to reduce administrative costs for all actors involved, notably SMEs, while preserving the environmental integrity of the CBAM. It is written: “ This is achieved by amending the threshold and setting a target of at least 99% of  emissions to remain in the scope. By exempting less than 1% of emissions the amendment would preserve the environmental objective of the CBAM. Given the above, this proposal consists in an exemption based on an annual cumulative mass threshold of imports in the four industrial CBAM sectors per importer. A mass-based threshold of 50 tonnes is proposed to ensure that more than 99% of emissions are maintained in the scope “. Indeed, the choice of a threshold of 50 tonnes per year per importer is guided by two dimensions: 1) preserve the environmental integrity of the CBAM; 2) conditional to one, maximise the benefit in terms of reduced administrative burden.

The starting point, the CBAM is an environmental measure.

  • The current threshold is too low;
  • The current threshold is expressed in monetary value. This is not a good indication for

policy relevance, since the CBAM is based on embedded emissions.

  • The current threshold is applied on a consignment-basis. This poses problems in terms of circumvention risks, which led the European Union to abolish the EUR 22 VAT threshold17 and the European Commission to propose abolishing the EUR 150 threshold for customs duties.

Therefore importers that expect to stay below the annual cumulative threshold, and thus qualify for the exemption, can, when lodging an import declaration for a CBAM good, self-identify as an occasional CBAM importer and thereby be granted a derogation from the authorisation obligation. In principle, these importers would not be required to take any additional administrative steps and would not have to access the CBAM Registry.

Other points that should be taken into account:

  • Declarants will be able to purchase CBAM certificates from February 2027 to cover the emissions embedded in the CBAM goods they will have imported during 2026. The calculation method for the certificate prices will not be affected, and certificates bought in a given week in 2027 to cover for 2026 emissions will reflect the applicable weekly ETS price as calculated by the Commission. As CBAM declarants cannot acquire CBAM certificates in 2026, there is a need to determine the applicable EU ETS price for purchases of CBAM certificates in 2027 pertaining to emissions embedded in CBAM goods imported in 2026. For this purpose, the Commission will calculate the price of CBAM certificates based on the quarterly average of the closing prices of the EU ETS allowances of the quarter of importation o the CBAM goods to which those emissions correspond.
  • No “double-charging” approach: under the CBAM regulation, the deduction of a carbon price effectively paid in a third country was designed to avoid double charging thereby promoting the uptake of carbon pricing in third countries. However, the CBAM regulation sets a comparatively high burden on the CBAM declarant for allowing a deduction of a carbon price paid in a third country.
  • The ‘best available information’ would evolve over consecutive compliance periods, on the basis of cooperation with the third country. Therefore, the default values for carbon prices paid in third countries would be periodically revised. Where insufficient information is available in a specific country, the Commission would set more conservative default values to incentivise the provision of reliable data, while taking into account the need to reasonably reflect the carbon price paid. This option provides additional flexibility for the producer and declarant, while ensuring that the European Commission can develop a workable approach to the carbon price deduction.