The future Green Pact or Green Deal announced by the President-elect of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, will involve the integration of climate change into all EU policies and a review of all European legislation, according to the European Commission.
But the identification of mechanisms while ensuring the external dimension is only just beginning, stressed several directors of the European institution who were invited to speak on the issue by the Women in Trade Network in Brussels on Thursday 24 October.
Trade and climate policies “must be mutually reinforcing”, stressed Ewa Synowiec, Director for sustainable development at the Commission’s Directorate-General for Trade.
Thus, to avoid any ‘carbon leakage’, i.e. the departure of EU companies to production sites with lower emission constraints, Mrs von der Leyen promised to develop a border adjustment mechanism reductively called the ‘carbon tax’.
While taxation does indeed provide effective tools to restore a level playing field for companies, the implementation of such a tax will be difficult, the speakers admitted.
Among other difficulties, the comparison between the carbon footprint of local and imported products will be “difficult”, Mrs Synowiec acknowledged, saying that any such tax must be compatible with World Trade Organization (WTO) rules.
The work is just beginning: the Commission still needs to study the available instruments, assess their impact and consult stakeholders, the speakers stressed.
In the end, “we don't know yet” whether this will actually take the form of such a tax, admitted Maria Teresa Fabregas Fernandez, Director at the Commission's Directorate-General for Taxation and Customs. (Original version in French by Hermine Donceel)