The European Union reached a political agreement on Tuesday to put a carbon dioxide emissions tariff on imports of polluting goods. Among others on the list are steel and cement. This is a groundbreaking program intended to boost European companies as they decarbonize. The decision came about later after an all-night debate.
Around five in the morning in Brussels, mediators from EU nations and the European Parliament secured an agreement on the law assessing CO2 discharge penalties for bringing in potentially contaminating goods. On the list are iron and sword, cement, diseases, aluminum, and energy.
Businesses bringing those products to the EU will need to buy special certifications. Those certifications are supposed to cover the containing CO2 emissions their goods will produce.
The European Union plan aims to charge original EU heavy industries. They formerly impelled the EU heavy industries to buy permits from the EU carbon market when they pollute. It’s the same quantum for CO2 as for foreign companies.
The border taxation will be essential to the EU’s attempts to combat climate change, said the media Mohammed Chahim, the senior negotiator for the offer in the European Parliament.
According to Chahim, it’s one of the many tools the European Union has for encouraging local trading partners to decarbonize their manufacturing sector.
The emissions tariff will limit environmentally non-regulated countries
The duty’s purpose is to shield European businesses from being outbid by less green products coming from nations with laxer environmental regulations.
It’ll also apply to imported hydrogen, which was a demand made during the talks but wasn’t included in the original EU offer.
This week’s negotiations on a reform of the EU carbon request will define some of the law’s specifics, including when it’ll go into effect.
No more free CO2 licenses for domestic manufacturers
In order to cover the domestic heavy industry from foreign competition, the EU now provides free CO2 licenses. Still, in order to adhere to WTO regulations, the EU aims to phase out these free permits once the border carbon emissions tariff is enforced. The debate about the carbon market will determine how fast that phase in occurs.
According to Brussels, if a country has climate change programs that are equal to those of the EU, they may be exempted, and it has been argued that the United States may be an exemption from the tax on this base.
Will the U.S. be exempted from the emissions tariff rule?
The Inflation Reduction Act’s subventions for green technologies, which the EU has claimed could hurt European enterprises, have led to increased trade pressures with the United States and disapproval of the EU plan from nations like China.
But, according to Frans Timmermans, the head of the EU’s climate policy, the United States may dodge the emissions tariff on the ground of the green subventions of the Inflation Reduction Act.
The tax is a part of an EU policy package aimed at precluding disastrous climate change by reducing EU emissions by 55 from the 1990 levels by 2030.
This is why companies importing goods into Europe would need according to the EU program to buy certificates to cover the CO2 emissions contained in their products. The point is to level the playing field between domestic EU enterprises and foreign businesses by requiring them to buy permits from the EU carbon market when they import goods containing pollutants.