EU corners India, developing World over carbon tax at COP29

The tax, or CBAM, is to be imposed by EU in 2026 on products whose manufacturing processes do not follow certain emission standards

- S DINAKAR

The European Union (EU) may have pushed India and other developing countries into a corner over opposition to the proposed carbon border adjustment mechanism (CBAM) by moving the discussion on the carbon tax to a separate committee at COP29—29th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC)—instead of accommodating it on the core agenda, as demanded by countries like India and China.

The new forum will not only discuss the CBAM but also the broader issue of domestic subsidies given by developing countries, EU officials said.

"The UNFCCC is not the right forum to discuss the consistency of climate policies with trade disciplines. That's the WTO (World Trade Organisation)," said Jacob Werksman, a key negotiator for the EU and principal adviser to the Directorate General for Climate Action in the European Commission, to a question posed by this reporter in Baku, Azerbaijan, on the sidelines of COP29. "There's no space within the UNFCCC to challenge or to discipline or to assess the policies of any particular country," he added. Werksman admitted that CBAM was a concern and that there was a proposal that it would be included on the COP29 agenda as something framed as unilateral measures, but "we didn't include it".