8 April 2026 – Yesterday the European Commission published the first certificate price for the CO2 tax CBAM. In doing so, it once again made abundantly clear that transparency is an unwelcome concept at the Commission.
CBAM: Commission Publishes Price for Q1 2026
Yesterday the European Commission published the first certificate price for the CO2 tax CBAM. According to the Commission, the price for the first quarter of 2026 stands at €75.36 per tonne of CO2.
CBAM Prices Based on Publicly Available Information?
While the Commission states that CBAM prices are based on publicly available information, it conspicuously fails to specify clearly and unambiguously from which “common auction platform” this data can be retrieved – let alone on what exact data basis its calculations are made. For a customs levy, this would be an absolute requirement. Yet another piece of evidence for the Commission’s either criminal conduct or maximum incompetence on this matter.
A Tax Traded on a Private-Market Exchange
Trading a tax on a free-market exchange such as the European Energy Exchange (EEX) – to whose data the affected public has only very limited access, largely behind a paywall – is questionable in every respect, and actively feeds the intransparency of EU state institutions that is so frequently and rightly criticised.
Anyone still in doubt that CBAM is a tax should ask themselves why the CO2 tax sits under the Directorate-General for Taxation and Customs Union (DG TAXUD) rather than, as with EU ETS allowance trading, under the Directorate-General for Climate Action (DG CLIMA), and why the trading and financial settlement of that very “common auction platform” and its payment provider have been structured the way they have.
Calculation Basis Not Clearly Disclosed
While the mathematical formulae for calculating CBAM-related costs have been published, the formulae and exact data sources underlying the CBAM price itself are not readily available to the public. One is therefore currently left to assume that they are being pulled out of thin air. The relevant data feeds should in fact be publicly available for direct download from DG TAXUD – but that is evidently not something anyone wants. Perhaps a few more SMS deals need to be kept under wraps first…
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