An authorised CBAM declarant is a person to whom the competent authority of a Member State has granted an authorisation to import goods covered by the carbon border adjustment mechanism. Without that status such goods are not to be brought into the customs territory of the Union from 1 January 2026, and the obligations attached to it are three: file a CBAM declaration, buy certificates and surrender them in the number matching the embedded emissions.
This text describes how the mechanism is assembled and who appears in it: an importer established in Slovakia, an importer without a seat in a Member State, an indirect customs representative, a verifier and two Slovak authorities. It does not address the calculation of embedded emissions under Annex IV of the regulation, nor the price of certificates, which is derived from EU ETS auctions. Nor does it estimate how many Slovak importers will need the authorisation — no such list exists in publicly available form.
What ended on 31 December 2025
The CBAM transitional period began on 1 October 2023 and its content was a reporting duty without payment. An importer filed quarterly reports on embedded emissions and bought nothing. The definitive period, which began on 1 January 2026, changes all three elements at once: entry, reporting and payment (primary source — Regulation (EU) 2023/956, OJ L 130, 16. 5. 2023).
The change of regime arrived together with an extensive amendment. Regulation (EU) 2025/2083 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 8 October 2025, published on 17 October 2025 and effective on the third day after publication, rewrote a substantial part of the original text: it introduced a de minimis exemption based on mass, moved the deadlines and set the date from which certificates are sold (primary source — Regulation (EU) 2025/2083, OJ L series, 2025/2083, 17. 10. 2025).
For practical planning one thing follows, and it is worth stating at once: 2026 is the year of import, not the year of payment. Certificates for goods imported in 2026 are bought only from February 2027 and surrendered in September 2027. The duty to apply for the authorisation, however, arose before the first import in 2026.
An authorised CBAM declarant established in Slovakia: authorisation before import
Article 5(1) of the regulation in its applicable version requires every importer established in a Member State to apply for the status of authorised declarant before importing goods into the customs territory of the Union. The application goes to the competent authority of the Member State of establishment and its content is listed in Article 5(5).
The amendment added to the list of particulars the number of the authorised economic operator certificate, where the applicant holds AEO status under Article 38 of the Union Customs Code. This is not a condition of the grant but a fact the authority sees when assessing the application. An applicant without AEO simply leaves it out.
The move from the transitional period to the definitive one was handled separately by Article 17(7a). A person who filed an application under Article 5 by 31 March 2026 may temporarily continue importing until the competent authority decides. If the authority refuses the authorisation, it determines within one month of the decision the emissions embedded in goods imported between 1 January 2026 and the date of that decision, using the default values from Annex IV; the penalty is then calculated from that amount.
An authorised declarant may delegate the filing of CBAM declarations to a person acting in its name and on its account. Responsibility for compliance does not pass with it — Article 5(7a) says so expressly. Delegation is therefore an organisational measure, not a transfer of risk.
An importer without a seat in a Member State: the role of the indirect customs representative
Where an importer is not established in a Member State, the status of authorised declarant must be obtained by the indirect customs representative. That is what Article 5(2) says in its applicable version, and the amendment added two clarifications to it that shift the division of responsibility between importer and representative considerably more than first appears.
The first clarification is in Article 5(1a): an indirect customs representative acts as authorised declarant where the importer designates it under Article 18 of the Union Customs Code and where it agrees to do so — irrespective of whether the importer is exempt from obligations on the basis of the mass exemption. The second is in Article 5(2a): where the representative acts as authorised declarant, the obligations of the importer apply to it in respect of goods imported on behalf of that importer.
The question „who is responsible for the certificates, the importer or the representative“ is therefore wrongly put. The text does not divide responsibility between two parties — it moves the whole of it to whoever holds the status. A representative that has agreed bears the importer’s obligations, including surrender of certificates and including the penalty for failing to surrender them.
An importer below the mass threshold of 50 tonnes
The amendment introduced a new Article 2a with a de minimis exemption. An importer is exempt where the net mass of goods imported in a calendar year does not exceed the single mass-based threshold. Annex VII point 1 sets it at 50 tonnes of net mass, aggregated per importer and per year across all CN codes (primary source — Regulation (EU) 2025/2083, Article 2a and Annex VII, as of 22. 8. 2026).
The threshold is a single one for four sectors together — iron and steel, aluminium, fertilisers and cement. It is therefore not 50 tonnes of steel plus another 50 tonnes of aluminium. Article 2a does not apply at all to imports of electricity and hydrogen, which means that for those two commodities the mass exemption does not exist.
Crossing the threshold does not operate prospectively but back across the whole year. Where an importer exceeds the threshold in the relevant calendar year, it becomes subject to all obligations in respect of all emissions embedded in all goods imported in that year. That is why Article 5(1b) requires the application for authorisation to be filed by the importer that expects to exceed it — not by the one that has already recorded the excess.
The exemption is declared in the customs declaration. And goods imported below the threshold do not disappear from reporting: Article 6(2)(a) provides that the CBAM declaration contains the total quantity of each type of goods imported during the preceding year, including goods imported below the single mass-based threshold.
The figure of 50 tonnes is not fixed. By 30 April each year the Commission assesses, on the basis of data for the preceding twelve months, whether the threshold ensures that the exemption covers at most 1 % of the emissions embedded in imported goods. If the methodology of Annex VII yields a value deviating by more than 15 tonnes, the Commission adopts a delegated act and the amended threshold applies from 1 January of the following year. The methodology works with a target share of 99 % of emissions and a tolerance of 0,25 of a percentage point.
The verifier: when actual values are required
Embedded emissions may be determined in two ways: by default values under Annex IV or by actual values from an installation in a third country. The second route carries a condition — where emissions in goods imported from 2026 are determined on the basis of actual values, they must be verified by a verifier. That sentence appears in the recitals of Commission Delegated Regulation (EU) 2025/2551 of 20 November 2025.
That delegated regulation lays down the conditions for granting accreditation to verifiers, for their control and supervision, for withdrawal of accreditation, and for mutual recognition and peer evaluation of accreditation bodies. It was adopted on the basis of Article 18(3) of the base regulation and published on 22 December 2025 (primary source — Delegated Regulation (EU) 2025/2551, OJ L series, 2025/2551, 22. 12. 2025).
The Commission aligned the requirements with those applying to the EU ETS under Directive 2003/87/EC. The reason is stated directly in the recitals: consistency between the two instruments is to reduce the administrative burden on verifiers, national accreditation bodies and competent authorities alike. For an importer it follows that a verifier is not any audit firm but a body accredited under a defined procedure.
The Slovak authorities and penalties: the ministry and the Financial Directorate
Slovak Act 414/2012 Coll. on emission allowance trading assigns two authorities to the mechanism, each with a different function. The ministry imposes penalties and assesses the criteria for granting the status; the Financial Directorate of the Slovak Republic supplies the underlying information and informs importers. The time version read here is the one in force from 15 July 2026 (primary source — Slov-lex, Act 414/2012 Coll., version in force from 15. 7. 2026).
Under Section 27a the Financial Directorate informs importers and indirect customs representatives of the reporting duty and supplies the ministry, on request, with information about breaches of customs and tax rules committed by an applicant during the five years preceding the year of the application. The scope is defined by three points: identification of the breach with the provision cited, description of the act with the time it was committed, and the type and amount of the sanction imposed.
The same provision gives the Financial Directorate one more task that may prove decisive in practice: at the ministry’s request it may provide a consultation on whether an applicant for the status can be regarded as a person established in the customs territory of the Union. It is precisely that qualification which decides whether the importer applies itself or whether the status must be obtained by an indirect customs representative.
The act also gives the Ministry of Economy of the Slovak Republic an informational role towards the environment ministry: under Section 26(5) it notifies it, upon prior request, of the criteria needed for granting or withdrawing the status of authorised declarant. An express provision naming, in the version read, the authority that grants the authorisation itself is not there; the status is mentioned in the text only in Section 26(5), in Section 27a and in Section 28.
Penalties for non-compliance are governed by Section 28 of the same act. Subsection 3 imposes on an authorised declarant that fails to surrender the number of certificates matching the emissions embedded in goods imported during the preceding calendar year a penalty of 100 euros for each certificate not surrendered. Payment of the penalty does not release the declarant from the duty to surrender the certificates at the latest when surrendering for the following year, and the penalties rise in line with the European consumer price index.
Subsection 4 is aimed at a person without the status. On a person that is not an authorised declarant and brings goods into the customs territory of the Union without complying, the ministry imposes a penalty of three to five times the penalty under subsection 3. In setting the amount, regard is had to the gravity of the breach, the duration of the unlawful state, its repetition and the level of that person’s cooperation with the ministry; the penalty applies in the year the goods are brought in, for each certificate not surrendered.
The deadline in subsection 3 is, however, 31 May — and that is a date the applicable version of the regulation no longer contains. Article 22(1), as amended in October 2025, requires certificates to be surrendered by 30 September each year, first in 2027 for 2026. The same date appears in Article 6(1) for filing the CBAM declaration and in Article 26(1) for the penalty at Union level.
| Obligation | Source | Deadline in the text |
|---|---|---|
| Surrender of certificates — original version | Regulation (EU) 2023/956, Art. 22 para. 1 | 31 May |
| Surrender of certificates — applicable version | Regulation (EU) 2023/956 as amended by Regulation (EU) 2025/2083 | 30 September |
| CBAM declaration — applicable version | Regulation (EU) 2023/956, Art. 6 para. 1 | 30 September |
| Penalty at Union level — applicable version | Regulation (EU) 2023/956, Art. 26 para. 1 | 30 September |
| Penalty under the Slovak act | Act 414/2012 Coll., Section 28 para. 3 | 31 May |
| Surrender of EU ETS allowances in the same act | Act 414/2012 Coll., Section 28 para. 1 | 30 September |
The chronology is unambiguous. The regulation that moved the deadline was adopted on 8 October 2025 and published on 17 October 2025. The Slovak provision carrying the original deadline entered into force on 1 January 2026: in the time version in force from 1 October 2025 the string with the May date does not appear once, and the then Section 28(3) was aimed at a reporting declarant with a penalty of 10 euros to 50 euros per tonne of unreported emissions (primary source — Slov-lex, Act 414/2012 Coll., version in force from 1. 10. 2025). The act has been amended once since — the version in force from 15 July 2026 contains the same deadline.
What follows for a declarant has to be put carefully. The regulation is binding in its entirety and directly applicable in all Member States; the deadline for surrendering certificates is therefore the one stated in Article 22(1) in its applicable version. The conflict concerns the penalty provision, which refers to that deadline by the wrong date. It becomes practical for the first time only in 2027, when surrender for 2026 falls due — until then there is room to remove it by amendment.
Three misunderstandings the text of the regulation does not support
Three claims recur in summaries of the mechanism which the applicable text of the regulation does not confirm. Each of them is set out below together with the provision that refutes it and with the consequence that provision carries for planning imports. The order runs from the most frequent to the least frequent, and all three can be checked directly in the source, without reference to any third-party interpretation.
- „A small importer need not worry about CBAM.“ The exemption under Article 2a is tied to the calendar year and to cumulative net mass. Whoever exceeds the threshold is subject to the obligations for the whole year, not from the moment of exceeding it — and is to file the application already when the excess is expected.
- „The threshold is the value of the consignment.“ The single threshold is a mass one: 50 tonnes of net mass aggregated per importer and per year across all CN codes in the four sectors. It does not apply to electricity and hydrogen.
- „Certificates are bought on a rolling basis from 2026.“ Under Article 20(1) in its applicable version, a Member State sells certificates on the common central platform from 1 February 2027. The year 2026 is a year of import and reporting, not a year of purchase.
The dates that apply
The following dates follow directly from the provisions cited above and are listed chronologically. Each of them is tied to a specific article of the regulation or to a section of the act, so it can be checked without an intermediary. Two of them concern 2026, three concern 2027, and one recurs every year, because it is a periodic review of the threshold.
- 31 December 2025 — the end of the CBAM transitional period.
- 1 January 2026 — the start of the definitive period; entry into force of Section 28(3) of Act 414/2012 Coll.
- 31 March 2026 — the date by which an application under Article 5 allows imports to continue temporarily until the competent authority decides.
- 30 April each year — the Commission’s assessment of the mass-based threshold on the basis of data for the preceding twelve months.
- 1 February 2027 — the start of sales of CBAM certificates on the common central platform.
- 30 September 2027 — the first CBAM declaration and the first surrender of certificates, both for 2026.
Zdroje a dáta
Primary sources: EUR-Lex — Regulation (EU) 2023/956 of the European Parliament and of the Council in its original version and Regulation (EU) 2025/2083 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 8 October 2025 amending it; further, Commission Delegated Regulation (EU) 2025/2551 of 20 November 2025 on the accreditation of verifiers. All three were read in the Slovak language version of the Official Journal.
Further, Slov-lex — Act 414/2012 Coll. on emission allowance trading in two time versions: the one in force from 15 July 2026 after amending act 125/2026 Coll., and the one in force from 1 October 2025 to 31 December 2025. The comparison of the two versions serves solely to establish the day from which the penalty provision on the authorised declarant applies; the content of amending act 125/2026 Coll. is not assessed here.
Neither a list of Slovak authorised declarants nor the volume of CBAM goods imported into Slovakia could be verified in publicly available form, and for that reason no figure on the number of importers or on volumes is stated in the text. The financial administration page devoted to the mechanism was not available at the time of checking, and the tasks of the Financial Directorate therefore rest solely on Section 27a of the act.
This material is a general analysis of published rules. It is not legal, tax, immigration or financial advice.