European Parliament Votes to Widen CBAM: 457 Downstream Products and Tougher Anti-Circumvention Rules

On 15 September 2026, the European Parliament adopted its negotiating position on the next major expansion of CBAM - and it goes considerably further than what the European Commission originally proposed. MEPs backed the position by 464 votes to 50, with 159 abstentions, a margin that leaves little doubt about Parliament's appetite for a wider, stricter mechanism.

If you import steel or aluminium goods into the EU - finished or semi-finished - this is the vote that determines what "in scope" means for you from 2028 onward. Here is what changed, and what to do about it now.

From 180 products to 457

CBAM's downstream expansion has been moving through the EU's institutions since the Commission proposed adding roughly 180 downstream products - screws, bolts, engines, washing machines and similar finished goods - to the mechanism's scope in December 2025. The Council took a slightly broader view, landing on around 200 product lines.

Parliament's Industry, Research and Energy Committee went considerably further. The position adopted on 15 September extends coverage to approximately 457 product lines containing steel or aluminium, explicitly naming categories such as fasteners, wire, springs and household articles [1][2]. That is more than double the Council's figure and roughly 2.5 times the Commission's original list.

The gap between the three institutions' positions is now the central question for the next phase of negotiation. Parliament must reconcile its list with the Council's before the file becomes law, and importers of finished steel and aluminium goods - a much broader universe of companies than today's CBAM declarants - should not assume the narrower Commission or Council figures will be the final word.

Anti-circumvention: a higher bar, but a narrower target

Parliament also tightened the rules aimed at circumvention - companies restructuring supply chains, reclassifying goods, or making minor product modifications specifically to dodge CBAM obligations. Two changes stand out:

• Lower thresholds for flagging minor modifications as circumvention, making it easier for the Commission to act when a product is altered just enough to escape a CN code covered by CBAM [2].
• A narrower legal target. Parliament's text is designed to catch "arrangements set up purely to avoid CBAM," explicitly stepping back from catching "normal business decisions to lower a company's costs" [1]. Where circumvention is identified, the Commission gains the power to apply default values based on the shipment's true country of origin rather than the declared one.

For compliance teams, the practical implication is the same either way: sourcing decisions, tolling arrangements and country-of-origin documentation are about to receive more scrutiny, not less - even if the legal test for what counts as abuse has been drawn more carefully than the Commission's original proposal.

What Parliament rejected - and what it added instead

Two other decisions are worth flagging for anyone tracking how the EU plans to manage CBAM's rougher edges.

Parliament rejected the Commission's proposed safeguard mechanism, which would have allowed goods to be temporarily removed from CBAM's scope during a price shock. In its place, MEPs adopted a mechanism to temporarily redirect CBAM revenues to affected sectors instead of suspending obligations outright [1].

Parliament also approved, in a separate vote (433 in favour, 97 against, 146 abstentions), a temporary decarbonisation fund to support EU producers competing on export markets. The fund would run from 2027 to 2029 - earlier and shorter than the 2028 start originally floated - and its eligibility has been extended to include fertiliser producers and downstream fertiliser users [1][2]. An electricity exemption tied to grid stability was also included in the package [2].

What happens next

This is a negotiating position, not law. Parliament will now enter trilogue negotiations with the Council to agree a final text; until that process concludes, the current CBAM product scope remains in force and nothing changes for today's declarants [2]. Given the size of the gap between Parliament's 457 product lines and the Council's roughly 200, this round of negotiations is unlikely to be quick.

That said, waiting for the final number before acting would be a mistake. Three things are worth doing now:

1. Map your product portfolio against all three lists - Commission, Council and Parliament - not just the narrowest one. If your goods appear on any of them, you are a plausible candidate for 2028 scope.
2. Revisit tolling, tolling-adjacent, and tariff-engineering arrangements with your trade and customs teams. The anti-circumvention language is aimed squarely at structures whose only purpose is avoiding CBAM.
3. Track the decarbonisation fund's eligibility criteria as they firm up in trilogue, particularly if you are an EU producer of fertiliser, steel or aluminium goods facing export competition.

We will track the trilogue negotiations and update this analysis as the Council and Parliament positions converge.

Sources: [1] European Parliament approves broader CBAM scope, limitations remain - EUROMETAL [2] European Parliament Backs Expansion of CBAM to Downstream Steel and Aluminium Products - VATupdate