EU carbon tax could lock UK farmers out of European market

Dmitry Grozoubinski, a former Australian trade negotiator and founder of the Explain Trade website, said a carbon adjustment tax at the EU border is ‘almost inevitably coming’ because the bloc wants to stop producers being undercut by lower standard imports and prevent pollution being ‘outsourced’ to other countries.

But he pointed out the mechanism which the EU uses could leave UK farmers at a disadvantage, despite their positive track record on sustainability.

“Say something arrives in the EU, then the EU calculates how much carbon tax it would have paid had it been made in the EU,” Mr Grozoubinski told attendees of the NFU Cymru conference in Llandrindod Wells last week (November 7).

“It will then will probably allow some system for you to say, ‘that is the average, but look at all these things I have done to produce it more cleanly, you should charge me less’.