CBAM Non-Compliance Penalties: What the Regulation Sets

By Ahmed Medhat · Published9 May 2026 · Updated 3 September 2026

CBAM Non-Compliance Penalties: What the Regulation Sets

The regulation fixes how the penalty is calculated: per CBAM certificate not surrendered.

The standard penalty — certificate shortfall

Under Article 26(1) of Regulation (EU) 2023/956, if an authorised declarant fails to surrender sufficient CBAM certificates by the annual deadline — 30 September of the year following import — a penalty falls due for each certificate not surrendered. Article 26(1) does not name an amount of its own: the penalty "shall be identical to the excess emissions penalty set out in Article 16(3) of Directive 2003/87/EC and increased pursuant to Article 16(4) of that Directive, applicable in the year of importation of the goods". That is the €100 per tonne of CO₂e figure, indexed under Article 16(4), so the amount actually payable in a given import year is the indexed one, not a flat €100.

This is a per-tonne penalty — not a flat fine. For each certificate not surrendered, the declarant pays the indexed Article 16(3) amount, €100 per tonne before indexation, and still owes the certificate itself.

The severe penalty — unauthorised imports

If goods are brought into the EU by someone who is not an authorised declarant, the penalty is three to five times the Article 26(1) penalty for each CBAM certificate that person has not surrendered (Regulation (EU) 2023/956, Article 26(2)). Article 26(2a) applies it to importers who exceed the single mass-based threshold without the status, counting all the emissions embedded in their imports that year.

The competent authority revokes the status of authorised CBAM declarant where the declarant asks for it, no longer meets the criteria for the status, or has been involved in a serious or repeated infringement of its obligations to surrender certificates or to hold enough on its account (Article 17(8)).

What triggers these penalties

Three situations create penalty exposure for your EU buyer:

1. Missing the certificate surrender deadline. Certificates must be surrendered by 30 September each year, and for the first time in 2027 for the year 2026 (Article 22(1)). Late surrender — even by one day — triggers the Article 26(1) penalty on every certificate not surrendered.
2. Declaring inaccurate emissions data. If a CBAM declaration is submitted using incorrect SEE data — including inaccurate data provided by the exporter — and this results in a certificate shortfall, each certificate that should have been surrendered and was not carries the Article 26(1) penalty. Where the shortfall results from incorrect information from an operator, a verifier or a carbon-price certifier, the competent authority may reduce that penalty (Article 26(1a)).
3. Importing without authorisation. A person who is not an authorised declarant and brings CBAM goods in owes, under Article 26(2), three to five times the Article 26(1) penalty per certificate not surrendered.

The exporter's role in protecting your buyer

Your buyer's penalty exposure is directly linked to the quality of emissions data you provide. Exporters who supply verified SEE data — prepared under a documented monitoring plan and verified by an accredited third party — reduce the risk of an inaccurate declaration caused by supply-side data.

Where your buyer uses EU default values, those values are your exporting country's average (or, where no reliable country data exists, the average of the 10 highest-intensity exporting countries; Annex IV, point 4.1) rather than your installation's figure, and they carry a mark-up: 10% in 2026 for cement, iron and steel, aluminium and hydrogen, 1% for fertilisers (Implementing Regulation (EU) 2026/1740, Annex I).

Use the DeCarbonPro Gap Analysis tool to see the default value for your goods and its 2026, 2027 and 2028 mark-ups.