Ukrcement urges authorities to appeal to the EU to postpone CBAM

Ukrcement, the Association of Cement Producers of Ukraine, is calling on the Cabinet of Ministers to ask the EU to postpone the carbon border adjustment mechanism (CBAM) for the country. This is stated in a letter obtained by GMK Center.

The EBA reminded that on June 18 last year, representatives of key sectors of the national economy appealed to the Prime Minister to immediately hold talks with the European Commission on the application of the declarative CBAM method for Ukraine for the period of martial law and the initial period of reconstruction.

In August 2024, the Ministry of Economy announced in a letter that it had begun negotiations with the EC to ease CBAM for Ukraine. At the end of April 2025, at a workshop on the mechanism and its connection with the EU ETS, Oleh Bondarenko, chairman of the Verkhovna Rada Committee on Environmental Policy and Nature Management, informed about the main tasks of the negotiators regarding the postponement. He noted that the essence and terms of the CBAM are ready to be incorporated into Ukrainian legislation.

However, on April 29 this year, it was made public that Ukraine had not applied to the EU for a postponement of the CBAM environmental fee.

Given the importance of the declarative method of the mechanism for Ukraine, Ukrcement asks the Cabinet of Ministers to inform the government about the current stage of the negotiation process, to consider speeding up the formation of the country’s official position and initiating an appeal to the EC under the procedure provided for in Part 7 of Article 30 of the CBAM Regulation.

Earlier, the National Association of Extractive Industries of Ukraine and leading subsoil use market participants called on the Ukrainian authorities to urgently initiate negotiations with the EU on mitigating or postponing the terms of the CBAM, and the possibility of applying the force majeure clause to exclude Ukraine from the mechanism.

As noted, the CBAM will create additional obstacles for Ukrainian businesses, exacerbating the negative effects of the war and reducing export opportunities. The application of the mechanism will worsen the state of the country’s economy, which, among other things, contradicts the EU’s strategic interests.

According to GMK Center’s updated estimates, Ukraine may lose $7.2 billion of GDP by 2030 as a result of the CBAM.