As enacted, the EU’s Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) will force European fastener distributors to rely on the Commission's very high default values instead of using actual emissions data to calculate CBAM costs, according to European Fastener Distributor Association president Andreas Bertaggia.
“The rushed introduction of CBAM without the required verification system effectively acts as a drastic punitive tariff on imported screws, nuts and other fasteners, making them significantly more expensive than expected as early as 2026,” Bertaggia wrote in the EFDA appeal to the EU Commissioner for Climate, Net Zero and Clean Growth.
“This significantly increases the cost of fasteners and thus also of all appliances using them, reducing the competitiveness of products ‘Made in the EU’ on the world market.”
To enable the use of actual emissions data for the 2026 import year, EFDA called on the EC to immediately align the system boundary relevant to fasteners in the CBAM with those of the EU Emissions Trading System, enabling EU importers, manufacturers in third countries and auditors to know which emissions must be determined and verified for fasteners.
EU fastener distributors were only informed shortly before Christmas about key provisions for CBAM cost calculation, which impacted prices starting on January 1.
“The incorrect and unrealistically high default values for fasteners must be corrected immediately,” Bertaggia insisted.
The biggest obstacle is the bottleneck in verifying actual emissions data for imports in 2026. The situation is further complicated by another omission on the part of the Commission, which specifically affects fasteners.
“As emissions that are not relevant to the European Emissions Trading System (EU ETS) continue to be unlawfully considered under CBAM, EU importers are unfairly disadvantaged compared to domestic manufacturers. The result is that there is no reliable basis on which manufacturers in third countries and auditors can calculate and verify actual emissions.”
The default values are “largely incorrect and contradictory” and so high that they bear no relation to the values that European fastener distributors have collected from their suppliers during the CBAM transition period, he added. Applying current default values will cause the costs of fasteners to spike as much as to 30-50%.
“Due to its incredible complexity, CBAM overwhelms the thousands of small and medium-sized fastener manufacturers worldwide and therefore already has the effect of a non-tariff trade barrier. However, by effectively forcing EU fastener importers to use the absurdly high default values, CBAM now also fails to achieve its climate policy goal of creating incentives for importing goods with lower embedded emissions to make a financial difference.”
