HELSINKI (Reuters) -European Union finance ministers reached an agreement outlining the bloc’s new rules on carbon tariffs on imports, the so- called carbon border adjustment mechanism rules, Finland’s finance chief Annika Saarikko said after the meeting in Brussels on Tuesday.
The new regulations are meant to tax imports of goods made in countries with weaker CO2 emissions standards, so as to equalise the cost in terms of CO2 emissions to what manufacturers would have paid had the goods been made in the EU.
The EU Commission’s proposal for imported goods to fall under the new tariff include cement, electricity, fertilisers, aluminium, iron and steel.
“Today, under France’s presidency, we approved CBAM, or the carbon border adjustment mechanism, the general guidelines for it. This is a strong part of the core thinking in the EU’s climate policy,” Saarikko told reporters.
France had set the agreement as one of the goals for its EU presidency.
In addition to the war in Ukraine and its implications for the EU, Saarikko said member states also discussed a separate plan to introduce a global minimum corporate tax reform across the bloc.
“There is widespread readiness among EU countries to approve it but we could not resolve on the matter today,” Saarikko said.
(Reporting by Anne Kauranen in Helsinki, Editing by Louise Heavens, Susan Fenton and Jonathan Oatis)
