European steel industry players will struggle with the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) into 2026, when the measure takes full effect, participants said at Kallanish Europe Steel Markets 2025 in Amsterdam on Tuesday.
“I am not optimistic that 50% of players are prepared,” noted Stanislav Zinchenko, chief executive of Ukrainian consultancy GMK Center. “When your normal competence is that of a trader, people are not prepared in their business processes, and still do not understand this game,” he added, likening the buying of CBAM certificates to financial trading.
He predicted “chaos at the start”, and highlighted that CBAM will be less of a trade hurdle and more of a technical barrier to the supply chain on a trader and consumer level.
Tata Steel Nederland director markets, pricing & services Ronald de Haan said complications are not unusual in the early stages of a new measure.
“CBAM will be with us, not for years, but for decades,” de Haan noted. The mechanism needs enforcement tools and EU steelmakers will push for that. In an example of the complexity of the value chain, he wondered “if a reroller in Turkey buys hot rolled coil [substrate] from China, is he aware of those costs” when offering his final product into the EU.
ArcelorMittal Europe head of climate change – governmental affairs Stéphane Tondo reminded the panel that “CBAM is not meant to be a trade measure, and we Europeans should not expect it to protect us from clean steel coming from elsewhere”.
Christian Koehl Germany
