On 10 June, the European Commission closed the consultation feedback window on a crucial question about how the EU Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) will operate. This was probably the single most important question about CBAM: how much will exporters be able to deduct from the tariff for carbon prices already paid at home under measures like India’s Carbon Credit Trading Scheme (CCTS)?
The CBAM Regulation was adopted into European law in May 2023, but many key details remained to be specified in later implementing rules. Those details include the exact criteria for determining which types of domestic carbon payments made in third countries will or will not qualify as deductible under Article 9 of CBAM.
The Commission has been working on plans to implement Article 9 for over a year, discussing questions such as whether the EU should recognise carbon credits alongside compliance carbon prices, how "binding" and "non-discriminatory" a third country’s domestic carbon price tax or emission trading scheme needs to be, and how far rebates and free allocations should be allowed to erode the price an exporter can claim.
The Commission frequently holds stakeholder consultations about draft legislation. Stakeholders can give written feedback, which the Commission usually publishes on its website.
In 2025, the call for evidence drew 145 responses, and the May-June 2026 consultation on the draft regulatory text drew a further 177. Who actually contributed these feedback responses? Our tally of the 177 submissions on the draft legislation shows that a majority—101 (or 57%)—came from outside the EU, from stakeholders based in 25 third countries.
This big picture, however, is a little deceptive. Stakeholders from the UK accounted for 20 responses. Brazil, with 12, comes second, ahead of the US and Egypt at eight each, and Thailand and Taiwan at six. India, despite being one of the countries most exposed to CBAM's steel and aluminium coverage, registered just three feedback responses in 2026 and only one response to the 2025 call for evidence. Jindal Stainless was the only Indian respondent at both stages.
Composition matters as much as count. Brazil's feedback submissions include two federal government ministries filing jointly. Other feedback is from the National Confederation of Industry, sector-specific associations spanning steel, ferroalloys, biogas, chemicals, sugarcane and auto parts, a major steelmaker, and an academic research group. Brazil did not simply send more submissions — its inputs to the EU’s decision-making process reflect a cross-section of the national economic interests that have a stake in Article 9.
In contrast, all three Indian submissions come from private companies: Jindal Stainless Ltd; Value Network Ventures Advisory Services Pvt. Ltd; and TradePenetrate Private Ltd. None comes from the ministry of steel, ministry of commerce, the Bureau of Energy Efficiency, which leads on the CCTS, the ministry of environment, an industry association, civil society, research, or academia.
Non-participation is not a minor issue. The European Commission has appealed to the Indian government to provide more feedback on the CBAM legislation. As the Brazilian example shows, engaging with the EU about its policy plans is not purely a diplomacy task. It requires a government to make a fact-based case and rally responses to consultation processes.
Brazil, India, Indonesia, Türkiye and Vietnam are all trade partners with domestic carbon pricing regimes priced well below the EU ETS, for whom the technical design choices in the CBAM Article 9 implementing act will have important consequences. If their carbon charges are not recognised as deductible from CBAM, their exporters will effectively be paying twice–once at home and again at the European border.
India's Carbon Credit Trading Scheme sits squarely in that category. Whether its emissions-intensity targets, its treatment of rebates, or its still-modest ambition get read generously or narrowly under the Article 9 implementing rules is in the balance. And helpful answers to these questions are precisely what the consultation was meant to shape.
Silence has a cost
The lack of consultation responses does not mean India's voice was absent from every channel: Government-to-government dialogue and WTO fora remain open, and a written submission is not the only route to influence. But a technical implementing rule of this kind is written substantially based on the record placed before bureaucrats. When the Article 9 reference prices are eventually published, with the list of recognised carbon pricing instruments, and the evidentiary burden placed on exporters, all that will draw on what stakeholders actually said. A country that skips the formal consultation process does not exempt itself from the resulting rules—it simply accepts an outcome written by others.
Of the three Indian stakeholders who responded, only one addressed technical taxation issues. Jindal produced specific recommendations covering India's Central Value Added Tax (Cenvat) and listed specific certification requirements to guide their potential recognition under CBAM. The other two submissions, made by consultancies on behalf of clients, focused on other areas of CBAM, from emissions traceability to carbon credits.
India cannot assume that Commission staff sitting in Brussels have as expert an understanding of Indian policies or of Indian industries. India needs to represent itself. The next CBAM implementing act—or the next round of amendments extending the CBAM scope to downstream goods and to electricity supply—will pose the same question again. Third countries that want a seat at this table would do well to start claiming it, one consultation at a time.
Jesse Scott is a senior fellow at the Observer Research Foundation and Sangeeth Selvaraju is a policy fellow at the Grantham Research Institute at LSE. Views are personal