ZENICA, January 16 (FENA) – The Foreign Trade Chamber of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the EU4Energy project organized a training program today in Zenica on the topic “Carbon Emissions Cross-Border Settlement Mechanism (CBAM) and Alignment with the Rulebook for Export-Oriented Companies to the European Union: Reporting Guide and obligations of the industry in Bosnia and Herzegovina”.

The training was organized, first of all, for representatives of small and medium-sized companies from the region, and as energy efficiency expert Esma Manić pointed out in her statement to FENA, a total of seven such workshops will be held. Three workshops have already been held in Sarajevo, Banja Luka and Mostar, and on Thursday in Tuzla. One will be held in Tešanj and, due to the great interest of companies, in Bihać as well.

“The topic of these workshops is cross-border emissions, that is, taxes on cross-border emissions. I don’t know how aware the citizens of Bosnia and Herzegovina are, that is, businesses who export to the EU, that the first reports for the first quarter, which began on October 1, 2023, should be submitted by January 31 of this year.

So, this reporting period refers to the period October 1 – December 31, 2023. All companies that export are obliged to submit a report on emissions in the products they export,” Manić pointed out.

The problem, she says, is “quite new”, given that the EU made this decision last year and that it came into force on October 1.

“These emissions will not be subject to payment until December 31, 2025, and from January 1, 2026, companies from the fields of iron, cement, hydrogen, and electricity are obliged to pay for cross-border emissions, which will be based on the reports they submit. This means that every exporter in BiH who has products that are based on what we have stated is obliged to submit their reports to their clients in the EU, who will enter data for them in the European Register to which we, as a non-EU country, don’t have access,” said Manić.

She states that BiH companies that import materials, that is, semi-finished products that will be processed and export finished products, must “obtain reports on the emissions contained in the products they took for processing” from foreign companies. More than 70 percent of exports from BiH, points out Manić, are made with EU countries.

In the Regulation that entered into force on October 1, 2023, they also mention sanctions, but they are not fully defined.

“I do not expect that there will be any significant sanctions for the companies, at least in this transitional trial period, and from January 1, 2026, the sanctions will be defined and will certainly not be insignificant,” warned Manić.