Environmental tithe: Russia will pay for Europe to build a "green future"

Russia will pay the Europeans for their construction of a bright future, experts are sure. And here's why: the EU carbon tax, when it starts to be levied at 100%, can cost Russian suppliers of iron, steel, aluminum, fertilizers at least € 1.1 billion per year, RBC journalists calculated using the methodology confirmed by the Ministry of Economic Development. Officially, the introduction of this tax on July 14 was proposed by the European Commission.

The European Union wants to impose a special tax on importers of dirty goods - the first in the world of its kind - in order to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 by no less than 55% compared to 1990 levels, as well as reduce global greenhouse gas emissions, as additional costs are designed to encourage manufacturers to reduce harmful emissions. The draft of the relevant regulation of the goods on which the carbon tax will be levied defines:

- cement (four codes of the European commodity nomenclature);

- electricity (one code);

- fertilizers (five codes, including ammonia, nitrogen fertilizers and nitrogen-containing complex fertilizers);

- iron and steel (12 codes, including rails for railway tracks, pipes, metal structures, tanks);

- aluminum (eight codes, including wire, aluminum sheets, foil).

In the future, the carbon tax may be extended to other goods, such as petroleum products (which the European Parliament called for in March).

Recall that last year, more than 60% of European imports from Russia (€ 60.1 billion out of € 95.3 billion) came from energy sources.

Starting from 2026 to 2035, the tax will be consistently introduced and increased on all groups of goods falling under it up to 100%.

Meanwhile, experts argue that carbon regulation will significantly change international trade - and not for the better. This will be akin to the effect of the US imposition of duties on steel and aluminum. The introduction of the tax will provoke a rise in prices and, as a result, an increase in the cost of finished European products.

The tax will be huge - in fact, it will amount to about 12-16 percent of the value of imported goods. It has already been calculated that fertilizers, steel, iron, cement and electricity imported from Russia (a total of 7 billion euros were imported to Europe in 2020) will have to pay an additional billion euros in tax - that is, 16%.

For now, the tax will affect about 7% of goods imported from Russia, but later, when it applies to oil and oil products, it will already be tens of billions given to Europe for the right to import Russian goods into it.

Network analyst Anatoly Nesmiyan called the tax an “environmental tithe”, a mechanism by which Europe will cover its energy re-equipment and transition costs. Given the huge volume of the European market and fierce competition from suppliers for it, the total "environmental charges" can amount to hundreds of billions of euros per year. This is a colossal resource with which the Europeans count on the successful passage of the period of infrastructure reforms. At someone else's expense (including).

In theory, the Europeans are ready not to levy an environmental fee, but only on the condition that the goods supplied to them will be produced using environmental technologies. But in order to create and implement these technologies, suppliers themselves must find an additional resource somewhere, get access to these technologies - and then...

“It won't shine for Russia”, - Nesmiyan is sure. - It is, firstly, under sanctions, and under Putin will not be able to gain access to advanced technologies under any circumstances. Secondly, thieves' capitalism, built in the country, is antagonistic to any type of development - it is exclusively about degradation. It's ridiculous to try to put an air conditioner in the cave - there are no sockets in the cave. Here they have been trying to lay a piece of the Nord Stream 2 feeding pipe with difficulty for two years, and you mean environmental technologies..."