Climate-Related Trade Regulation: The Impact of CBAM on Ukrainian Exporters

Анотація

The Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM), introduced by the European Union, has transformed climate policy into an important instrument of international trade regulation. The mechanism creates new legal, administrative, and reporting obligations for exporters of carbon-intensive products, which is particularly significant for countries with export-oriented heavy industry and limited institutional capacity. The aim of the study is to analyse the legal, administrative, and economic implications of CBAM for Ukrainian exporters under wartime conditions, with particular attention to monitoring, reporting, and verification (MRV) requirements as a source of indirect regulatory and tax pressure. The research is based on legal analysis, comparative analysis, and institutional assessment of EU regulatory documents, analytical reports, and recent academic studies devoted to CBAM implementation. Particular attention is paid to the interaction between climate governance, emissions reporting obligations, wartime disruption, and exporters’ institutional capacity to comply with EU standards. The study demonstrates that Ukraine’s vulnerability to CBAM is determined by the combination of wartime infrastructure destruction, dependence on carbon-intensive exports, and incomplete MRV infrastructure. It is established that the principal burden of CBAM for Ukrainian exporters emerges not from direct carbon payments themselves but from administrative and verification obligations related to emissions accounting and reporting. The analysis suggests that the inability to provide verified emissions data may lead to the application of default values, thereby increasing the effective compliance burden. MRV systems are characterized as instruments of indirect regulatory and tax pressure influencing exporters through reporting obligations, verification costs, and contractual requirements. The originality of the study lies in analysing CBAM through the perspective of wartime institutional disruption and MRV asymmetry rather than solely through carbon pricing or trade effects. The findings may be applied in the development of climate governance, verification infrastructure, and transitional support mechanisms for Ukrainian exporters.

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