From carbon borders to expiring safeguards to the unresolved definition of “green steel” itself, the 2026 Nordics meeting kept returning to a market reshaped by regulation arriving faster than it can be absorbed, and to a transition no link in the chain feels able to start alone.
The EUROMETAL Nordics meeting in Helsinki on 3 June 2026 gathered analysts, economists, lawyers, producers, distributors and end users at a moment of unusual regulatory turbulence for the European steel sector. Opened by Markku Uitto of the Finnish Technical Traders’ Association and EUROMETAL board member Piotr Sikorski, the day moved from an international session on the European market, CBAM and trade law, through a Nordics session on the regional economy and distribution, to a cross-value-chain round table on decarbonisation. Across six presentations and that closing panel, one picture recurred: a market in suspended animation, waiting on rules still being written, and a green transition stalled not only for want of demand but for want of an agreed definition of what it is even selling.
A market holding its breath
The international session opened the analytical case. Maria Tanatar, associate director at McCloskey by OPIS, described Northwest European hot-rolled coil down some 40 €/t since March, with buyers pausing restocking ahead of the new quotas due on 1 July. Her survey ranged across CBAM cost mechanics, anti-dumping cases, more than 20 million tonnes of idled EU capacity and a sprawling global map of green steel projects and premiums. The consensus she reported, that any real price recovery would arrive only in the second half of the year, set the tone for a day defined less by present conditions than by impending change.
CBAM as a moving target
If one acronym dominated, it was CBAM. Alexander Siryk, founder of Metals Consulting International, devoted an entire session to it, and his core point was that the mechanism, though now in its definitive phase, remains under active development. Verification does not begin until 2027, certificate purchases follow in February of that year, free allocations discount to zero by 2034, scope may expand to downstream products, default values may yet be corrected, and pricing is shifting to a weekly cadence. The practical consequence, he argued, is that importers must manage risk now, against rules that have not settled.
“CBAM regulations and framework is still under active development, creating a challenging business environment for buyers.”
Safeguards: a legal cliff-edge
The international session closed on trade defence. Lars Hillmann, counsel at Cattwyk law firm, set out the legal architecture of the EU’s expiring safeguard regime and its “Post-Safeguards” replacement, questioning whether the new measure, which the Commission calls an additional tariff, is in fact a “safeguard in disguise” that would breach the WTO’s eight-year limit. He flagged a cascade of unresolved problems: the retroactivity of rules applied to goods ordered months earlier, the coming melt-and-pour origin test, inconsistencies between member states at customs, and a potentially cumulative overlap with anti-dumping duties. The measure’s headline parameters, a 47 % quota cut and 50 % duties from 1 July as reported through the day, only sharpened the stakes.
The Nordics session: a brighter backdrop
The Nordics session opened with the regional economy. Penna Urrila, chief economist and director at the Confederation of Finnish Industries (EK), offered a Finnish and Nordic economic outlook that was cautiously constructive. Citing the IMF’s April 2026 forecast, he noted that the world economy had been only moderately affected by the war in the Persian Gulf under the baseline scenario, though adverse and severe oil-price scenarios pointed to wide variation in the global outlook. Companies’ short-term expectations were positive, and the Finnish economy, long sluggish and hit through the foreign-trade channel, was showing signs of an upturn, with improving confidence and forecasts revised up toward GDP growth of around 1,1–1,5 % in 2026.
Urrila’s most striking theme was the investment boost underway in the EU, and especially in Germany, tied to defence upscaling and the rebuilding of Ukraine. He put the programme at 500–1.000 billion € and described it as potentially larger in impact than Marshall Aid or German reunification spending. Analyst estimates, he noted, suggested a Ukraine ceasefire could lift EU GDP by around 0,2 %, and a credible peace agreement by 0,5 % or more, while the post-Cold-War era of European “peace dividends”, cumulative defence savings he put at some 4.200 billion €, was over. For Finnish and Nordic businesses, including steel, the message was that the demand backdrop carried clear upside, even as Finland had fallen behind its Nordic peers.
The distributor’s reality: CBAM, safeguards and absent buyers
The session then turned to those who must deliver it. Feon’s CEO Petri Kalliokoski described CBAM principles and formulas published “drop by drop” after steel for the first half of 2026 had already been bought, forcing wholesale changes to contracts and pricing. Long-term reliance on default values, he warned, would be a disaster for distributors and their customers alike. On the coming safeguards he was blunt, calling them dark clouds on the horizon: in a small, customer-specific market like Finland, where suppliers are chosen for reliability before price, the quota cuts narrow supplier choice exactly when availability has to be secured, with the cost landing ultimately on customers and, through them, on their global competitiveness.
The green steel thread ran through both distribution talks. Kalliokoski and BE Group’s managing director Petteri Korpioja each described customers who ask about EPDs, availability and price but rarely buy. Korpioja gave the deadlock its sharpest expression: a chicken-and-egg problem in which supply cannot be built before demand, yet demand will not form without reliable supply, leaving the market “still stuck.”
The round table: the deeper problem of definition
The closing round table, moderated by McCloskey by OPIS analyst Benjamin Steven, brought producers, distributors and downstream end users to the same table: Madhu Sayeenathan of SSAB Europe and Heidi Peltonen of Outokumpu for the producers; Sami Aro of Sten Teräs and Michael Andersson of Tata Steel Scandinavian Distribution SSC for the distributors; and Sinikka Lieho of Skanska and Sami Sivuranta of Componenta for the end users. Together they pushed that diagnosis a step further. The market cannot price what it cannot define. The European Commission, one producer noted, was expected to set out a definition of low-emission steel, for both carbon and stainless, by year-end, with two rival methodologies competing to shape it. A “sliding scale” ties classification to recycled (scrap) content and is largely backed by carbon steelmakers, on the logic that scrap is a finite resource; critics on the panel argued it quietly favours primary and direct-reduced-iron production while penalising high-scrap stainless and circular, secondary producers. A product carbon footprint approach covering scope 1 to 3 emissions, preferred by European stainless producers, was offered as the alternative. More than one participant called the EU’s draft green steel label a disappointment, warning that its thresholds risk being less ambitious than China’s.
Producers on the panel stressed credibility through transparency, presenting EPDs as the most robust evidence available today and distancing themselves from offsetting and mass balancing. Distributors returned to the economics: carrying a parallel “green” inventory across thousands of stocked items would push working capital to unacceptable levels. Borrowing a new-product-development analogy, one argued the sector cannot sell green steel until its definition, cost and sales channels are settled, with the cost of carrying the transition sitting with the mills rather than the middle of the chain. From the demand side, a construction procurement director described embodied-carbon limits in building permits tightening year on year, and a pressing need for verifiable, permit-usable emissions data that survives the journey through subcontractors and steel-frame package suppliers, without which buyers face accusations of greenwashing. An industrial OEM supplier countered with a warning about regulatory unpredictability, describing EU rules that arrive late and run to “180 pages that nobody can understand,” so that those quicker to move, often outside the EU, find a way round them first. Summing up, the moderator spelled out the practical near-term bind: steel already booked to arrive in 2027 faces quota exposure, CBAM costs and 50 % coverage on default values, with verification burdens stretching across unfamiliar parts of the supply chain.
On what mattered most right now, the panel was united in a few priorities: make the carbon cost predictable, start pricing carbon into decisions today because it is coming, protect the whole European industry rather than steel alone, and treat the carbon price as an opportunity to differentiate, not a threat to competitiveness.
A closing call to action
Drawing the day together, Piotr Sikorski, EUROMETAL board member and PUDS president, used his closing remarks to reframe what the meeting had been about and what the sector should do next. Its value, he suggested, lay in whom it chose to listen to. Distributors and processors had long taken their cues from producers, sitting “just in the middle” of the value chain, but that had changed: now they had to stand on the side of their clients and put the emphasis on the customer’s situation in order to protect their own.
“Not every conference is dedicated to give a voice to the giants, but listening to the users and customers is vital.”
He drew a pointed contrast with the last great dislocation. During the financial crisis of 2007–2009, the industry had debated the economy, demand and the real things; now the conversation was dominated by three regulation-driven challenges, CBAM, safeguards and green steel, a measure of how much had changed. That, he observed wryly, made the moment every lawyer’s dream, but the substance demanded more than commentary. The mood across the day had been one of caution: a market that has done what it can to prepare, from re-sourcing to low-emission mills to rewriting contracts, and is now waiting to see what the rules finally say. His answer was less about who pays for the transition than about who acts, and his message to the middle of the chain was to stop waiting and start pushing.
“If the situation is what it is, we have to be active. We have to put pressure on our governments and on the Commission, because we are fighting for our market. Let’s take this opportunity to make a change.
