Given the new global reality, how would the EU’s trade policy be shaped beyond CBAM?

• Florence School of Transnational Governance
• STG Climate

This session is part of the EUI Climate Week 2026

The EU’s CBAM regime started with payments on 1 January 2026. Free allowances to the covered sectors are scheduled to go down significantly after 2029, while industry is calling to review this modality. Some nervousness continues to exist in relation to issues such as resource shuffling and circumvention. Moreover, the solution for enhancing the EU’s export position is only temporary. On top of that, President Trump brought back tariffs while the EU is suffering from massive Chinese imports of EVs, batteries, or commodities such as steel or chemicals. Has a more frequent use of trade defence measures become unavoidable?

This session as part of EUI Climate Week aims to address the question of how effective CBAM is in preventing carbon leakage and whether future efforts should expand its scope or focus on implementation challenges, and to what extent the EU should adopt additional trade interventions—including more frequent use of trade defence measures.

Chair: Marc Vanheukelen, Rud Pedersen

Lead discussants:

• Aaron Cosbey, IISD
• Jake Werksman, European Commission and NY University

Conclusion: Jos Delbeke, European University Institute

Participation in this event is by invitation only and all deliberations will take place under the Chatham House rule (no views or positions may be attributed publicly to any participant).

More information and the full programme of the EUI Climate Week 2026 can be found here.