European Parliament Approves Introduction of Carbon Border Tax

Future carbon border tax should be introduced for products of oil refineries and the glass, paper and aluminium industry and not only for the power sector and energy-intensive industrial sectors like cement, steel, chemicals, and fertilisers, European lawmakers said.

The Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety of the European Parliament will vote on a report regarding the planned European Union carbon border adjustment mechanism (CBAM) that would be compatible with the rules of the World Trade Organization. The document will be later adopted as a European Parliament’s resolution to set the parliamentarians’ position ahead of the European Commission’s formal legal proposal for CBAM, expected by the end of June.

In one of the amendments, the parliamentarians are asking the European Commission to make the scope of the carbon border tax very broad.

“The European Parliament Considers that a CBAM should eventually cover all imports, but that in an initial phase, from 2023, it should cover the power sector and energy-intensive industrial sectors like cement, steel, aluminium, chemicals, glass, paper, oil refining and fertilisers, which continue to receive substantial free allocations, and still represent 94% of EU industrial emissions,” the article reads.

The current version of the document didn’t include oil refining, glass, paper, and aluminium, but representatives of the green, liberal, socialist and centre-right groups joined up to table an amendment to broaden the scope of CBAM.

Frans Timmermans, European Commission executive vice-president for the European Green Deal, recently said the EU would introduce a carbon border tax on non-EU countries unless they commit to lowering their emissions.

It could heavily affect big economies like China but also the Western Balkans and other countries.

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