Proponents are now making their case, spying an opening with the upcoming review and looming talks over the EU’s next seven-year budget, which will determine how the bloc repays the joint debt it took on in 2021 to stabilize a Covid-battered economy.
One of the plan’s biggest proponents, Poland, also currently holds sway over the EU’s policy conversation. The country will control the EU’s rotating six-month presidency until July, and its EU commissioner, Piotr Serafin, will oversee the budget portfolio for the next five years.
Of course, a CBAM expansion would only cover a small fraction of the EU’s debt payments, which are expected to run between €25 billion and 30 billion annually — up to 20 percent of the bloc’s current annual cash pot. But advocates say it’s a start.
“We need to find new own resources,” Poland’s Deputy Finance Minister Paweł Karbownik told POLITICO, using the Brussels parlance for tax revenue flowing directly to the EU budget. “And out of these new own resources on the table, the most promising could be CBAM.”
More money from CBAM
Austria, Bulgaria, Italy and Poland revived the CBAM conversation in December, when they circulated a paper arguing for an expansion of the scheme.
There are three main ways to grow CBAM: It can be extended it to new sectors, amended to cover exports as well as imports, or tweaked to include “downstream” products made from CBAM-covered imports — meaning finished or semi-finished products instead of just basic goods like steel.
