EP members urge European Commission to consider special CBAM regime for Ukraine
Members of the European Parliament have called on the European Commission to reconsider and soften its approach to applying the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) to Ukraine, stressing that the conditions of full-scale war require either a separate regime or special exemptions.
"I cannot imagine what country, what situation we can think about under which the force majeure is activated," CBAM rapporteur and Member of the European Parliament Mohammed Chahim said during a meeting of the European Parliament’s Committee on the Environment, Climate and Food Safety (ENVI), which last week reviewed amendments to the CBAM Regulation and the creation of a Temporary Decarbonization Fund.
According to him, the current force majeure mechanism effectively fails to take into account the realities of the war in Ukraine.
Chahim noted that Ukraine clearly lacks the capacity to carry out decarbonization at the required pace and cannot ensure independent verification of emissions data under wartime conditions. He proposed discussing the issue separately in order to find a special solution for Ukraine.
European People’s Party representative Peter Liese also publicly supported the need for a separate approach.
He said that he did not want to open Pandora’s box, but Ukraine is truly a special case.
Rapporteur on the Temporary Decarbonization Fund Pascal Canfin also backed his colleagues’ position and said he was disappointed by the European Commission’s lack of a clear response regarding Ukraine.
At the same time, European Commission representative Maria Elena Scoppio, director for indirect taxation and tax administration at the Directorate-General for Taxation and Customs Union (DG TAXUD), stated that Ukraine is not part of the current report and declined to comment on the possibility of applying a special regime or force majeure provisions to a country suffering from full-scale Russian aggression.
During the discussion, lawmakers also actively debated the broader consequences of CBAM for European industry and competition on global markets. In particular, Pascal Canfin directly linked the CBAM mechanism to the risks of strengthening Russia’s position in export markets, especially agricultural markets.
According to him, European producers face additional carbon-related costs, while Russian competitors bear no such burden. The EU should not give such a gift to Russia, Canfin said.
At the same time, proposals were voiced to further expand CBAM to additional customs codes in order to protect European companies. Commission representative Scoppio welcomed the discussion but stressed the principles of proportionality and technical feasibility, warning that overly broad expansion of the mechanism’s scope could create an excessive administrative burden.
As reported by Interfax-Ukraine, Deputy Prime Minister for European and Euro-Atlantic Integration of Ukraine Taras Kachka said in Brussels in mid-April that the European Commission had made a mistake in its calculations regarding the application of CBAM to Ukraine from January 1, 2026, which was confirmed by the practical results of the first quarter of 2026. He stressed that this mistake needed to be corrected and that relevant negotiations were currently underway at the level of the European Commission.
"I think we will find a solution that will satisfy the Commission," he said during a discussion at the Third Ukraine-EU Business Summit held on April 22-23. According to Kachka, a "good discussion" took place in Brussels with DG TAXUD Director-General Gerassimos Thomas.
Economy, Environment and Agriculture Minister Oleksiy Sobolev, who also participated in the meeting with Thomas, was more critical during the discussion, calling the interaction between Ukraine and the EU on the CBAM issue "strange."
"Sometimes it feels a little like gaslighting," the economy minister said.
He recalled that the Ukrainian side had expressed concerns throughout last year, especially in the second half, that CBAM would create many problems for Ukraine and had provided relevant calculations.
"And it’s not that the EU said this was unimportant. They said it would not happen. They had calculations showing there would be no impact. Now we are seeing a really, really major impact. And yes, we need to solve this," Sobolev said during the discussion at the business summit.
According to the Economy Ministry, due to the objective impossibility of emissions verification during wartime, Ukrainian exports in the metallurgical sector fell by between 17% and 93% in the first quarter of 2026, depending on the segment.
According to the minister, an agreement was reached for DG TAXUD to accelerate the process of verifying Ukraine’s emissions data and propose practical solutions for businesses.
In an interview with Interfax-Ukraine in early March, ArcelorMittal Kryvyi Rih CEO Mauro Longobardo said that because of CBAM, the company’s European clients had canceled all orders, which accounted for one-third of production, because they would have had to pay an additional $60 to $90 for every ton of products.
Earlier, representatives of the energy sector also complained about the impossibility of avoiding payment at the maximum CBAM tariff due to the lack of verification.
"That means everyone in Europe who had the courage to buy electricity from Ukraine, even from a solar power plant, must pay EUR 68 for every megawatt-hour at the end of the quarter," said Oleksiy Orzhel, head of the Kyiv office of the Energy Community Secretariat and Ukraine’s energy minister in 2019-2020, at the end of March.
He clarified to Interfax-Ukraine that CBAM verification of generating facilities in Ukraine, where the war continues, is unlikely this year and at the beginning of next year because demand for this service is currently very high, including among Balkan countries that have also been severely affected by the introduction of the mechanism.
In its April Inflation Report, the National Bank of Ukraine lowered its forecast for Ukrainian exports this year from $63.6 billion to $61.6 billion and reduced its GDP growth forecast from 1.8% to 1.3%, citing the introduction of CBAM since the beginning of the year among the reasons.