China, Türkiye and India supplied more than €33 billion worth of goods covered by existing European Union Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) codes in 2025, according to calculations based on Eurostat data. The value shows the scale of their supply to European buyers, but does not by itself rank their competitiveness under CBAM.
China supplied €17.09 billion of the goods, while Türkiye supplied €10.83 billion and India €5.30 billion. CBAM applies to goods identified under the existing EU codes, and all three countries are important to European metal supply chains.
Country-level labels and customs values do not capture differences between producers and installations. A blast-furnace steel plant, a scrap-based electric arc furnace mill and an aluminium smelter can have materially different CBAM-relevant emissions profiles, depending on direct process emissions and precursor sourcing.
Emissions evidence and certificate costs
The European Commission set the CBAM certificate price at €82.32 per tonne of carbon dioxide equivalent in the third quarter of 2026, up from €75.28 per tonne of carbon dioxide equivalent in the second quarter.
EU buyers must compare verified actual emissions data or relevant defaults, the product-specific free-allocation adjustment, possible recognition of a carbon price effectively paid abroad and the applicable certificate price. Legal calculation methods, emissions boundaries and adjustment benchmarks affect the final result, as do conventional logistics and quality factors. The final CBAM cost for a tonne of imported metal cannot be calculated simply by multiplying the certificate price by a national emissions factor.
The value of 2026 annual imports and their associated customs value are not the same as the certificates an importer will surrender in 2027. CBAM’s competitive effects will differ by product and customer: a supplier with robust factory-level evidence may preserve market access despite carbon-intensive production, while a lower-emitting exporter could lose a potential advantage if it cannot demonstrate actual performance.
Procurement shifts toward verified carbon data
Procurement teams should compare suppliers using the same CN8 product and technical specifications, and assess at least three bids on cost, verified emissions, delivery reliability and legal documentation. The comparison may also change negotiating power along the supply chain.
Possible supplier responses include cleaner production, better emissions metering, contractual guarantees, revised delivery arrangements and changes to EU buyers’ sourcing mix. European industrial competition is shifting from price and quality alone toward price, quality and provable carbon content.