24 August 2026 – Eleven BRICS countries are taking a united stand against CBAM, if necessary through the WTO. In purchasing power terms, they are two and a half times the size of the EU. Brussels is regulating in defiance of the actual balance of economic power. A €54,000 entry fee for 27 registrations: the PPWR is closing the Single Market to micro businesses. Almost 6,000 protests in four weeks. Will that force the Commission and Council to back down?
BRICS Against CBAM: Brussels Is Regulating a Bloc Larger Than Itself
There is good news from New Delhi. Last week, the environment ministers of the eleven BRICS countries adopted a joint declaration at the conclusion of their 12th meeting, describing CBAM as “unilateral, punitive, discriminatory and protectionist”. They intend to act in a coordinated manner, if necessary through the WTO and with reference to the GATT principle of non discrimination.
BRICS Purchasing Power Stands at Around USD 82 Trillion
More interesting than the outrage is the statistic behind it. Measured in purchasing power terms, and therefore by what is actually produced, the EU reaches around USD 31 trillion in 2026. The eleven BRICS countries stand at approximately USD 82 trillion and have therefore also moved far ahead of the G7 at USD 62 trillion.
Brussels is therefore trying to dictate production conditions to an economic bloc more than two and a half times the size of its own, while behaving as though it still possessed sufficient market power to force its dishonest green ideology onto the rest of the world.
For European importers of steel, aluminium, cement and fertilisers, this is not an academic question. They buy the certificates, they carry the reporting obligations, and they pay first when supplier countries respond. SMEs in particular are becoming the victims of European fantasies from a colonial era long since past.
Climate policy that is negotiated can work. Climate policy that is exported ultimately delivers neither emissions reductions nor trade. CBAM is well on its way to demonstrating both rather impressively.
€54,000 Entry Fee: PPWR Shuts SMEs Out of the Single Market
The EU Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation, PPWR, has applied in full since 12 August 2026. What that means can be seen on the farewell pages of retailers that are giving up. Numerous small online retailers intend to close by the end of the year if the Regulation remains unchanged.
One Market, 27 Registrations for PPWR
The reason is not ideology. It is arithmetic. Anyone shipping across Europe must register in 27 Member States, pay an authorised representative in each country and submit reports in each one. Estimates for full market access run as high as €54,000 per year, before a single parcel has even been shipped. According to the Commission, the market for these registrations is worth several billion euros.
For the large platforms, that is petty cash, spread across millions of shipments and effectively negligible. For a small or micro business with three employees, it means the end of its European business.
The PPWR does not sort the Single Market according to quality. It sorts it according to company size. That is called market foreclosure, even when it is labelled environmental policy.
Almost 6,000 Responses in Four Weeks
The Have Your Say consultation on the national producer registers has been running since 6 August 2026 and has attracted almost 6,000 submissions, many of them sharply worded. Consultations of this kind otherwise tend to peter out in the hundreds. This is not a lobbying apparatus speaking. These are the people affected.
How PPWR Simplification Died in the Council
The Commission knew by December 2025 at the latest that the Regulation was not working, when it presented an Omnibus proposal intended to soften the authorised representative requirement. In July 2026, the proposal failed in the Council.
Once again, France played a decisive role. Its packaging law is the most expensive in the Union. A common standard without a mandatory local PPWR representative would devalue that apparatus and undermine the business model of an entire industry of authorised representatives, consultants and environmental organisations along with it.
CBAM, steel tariffs and quotas followed the same pattern: Europeanise national interests through the Commission and distribute the costs across the other 26 Member States.
The Juncker Doctrine
The simplification proposal does not exonerate the Commission. It implicates it. It follows a pattern practised since Juncker: test how far you can go, retreat one step when the protests become loud, then bring the measure back later in a tougher form. With CBAM, this can be observed in real time.
The Council Is Next
The PPWR is not an accident. It is the result of a Commission that confuses regulatory density with progress, and of a Council that allows itself to be dictated to by a single Member State.
The correction does not belong in the next Omnibus. It belongs on the table now: suspend the registration requirement for micro, small and medium-sized enterprises, create a single PPWR register with mutual recognition, and end 27 parallel bureaucracies.
And if the Commission and Council are unable to do that, Parliament has an instrument for it. It is called a motion of censure under Article 234 TFEU.
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