EU member states imported €1,150.3 million of electricity from Serbia in 2025, while three flat-steel product families accounted for more than €500 million, according to 2025 trade statistics. The figures identify commercially important Serbia-EU flows for companies screening work under the European Union’s Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM), but broad customs codes do not establish which goods are covered by the law.
Electricity trade classified under HS271600 and EU CN 2716 00 00 amounted to 9.84 terawatt-hours. Its reported value was $1.30 billion, equivalent to about €1.15 billion and listed as €1,150.3 million. CBAM measures electricity in megawatt-hours, so trade value cannot be directly compared with steel or aluminium tonnage to assess embedded emissions.
Steel and aluminium flows need product-level checks
EU imports of Serbian hot-rolled non-alloy flat steel under HS7208 were valued at $384.23 million, equivalent to about €340 million using the annual 2025 euro-dollar average. Coated or plated flat steel under HS7210 was worth approximately €109.3 million, while cold-rolled flat steel under HS7209 was worth approximately €55.4 million. Together, the three flat-steel families exceeded €500 million in reported EU imports from Serbia.
The scale of those shipments makes carbon-data work at shipment level a priority for businesses trading the products. The 2025 trade figures also identify aluminium plate, sheet and strip under HS7606, valued at approximately €148.7 million, and containers and similar packaging under HS7612, at approximately €78.6 million. Other aluminium articles under HS7616 were worth about €62 million.
EU imports also included roughly €44 million of aluminium structures under HS7610 and approximately €41.4 million of bars and profiles under HS7604. Taken together, the product groupings indicate trade in processed and fabricated aluminium goods, not only unwrought metal. These broad HS product-family values can help businesses decide where to start compliance checks, but they are screening indicators rather than a complete measure of covered imports.
Whether a good is covered depends on its specific eight-digit EU Combined Nomenclature classification in Annex I. Some fabricated products in Chapter 73 or Chapter 76 are covered even though they may appear less like primary materials. By contrast, Serbia-to-EU ferrous scrap trade under HS7204 was around €22 million in 2025, and aluminium scrap under HS7602 was approximately €35 million; both are outside the initial CBAM product list.
Importers need reconciled CN8 and emissions records
Businesses cannot treat broad HS headings as the CBAM tariff list or calculate certificate obligations by multiplying a chapter’s total customs value by an emissions price. Charges depend on embedded emissions, applicable adjustments, carbon prices recognised as already paid in the country of origin, and the phase-out of EU free allowances. The applicable goods and emissions therefore need to be checked at product and shipment level.
A commercial data extract for CBAM work should include quantities, origin, producing installation, customs procedure, reporting importer and CN8 classification, alongside value. Businesses using distributors face particular urgency in reconciling product classifications and emissions data. A Serbian steel producer may issue a plant-level report for a coil, but the EU importer needs a defensible allocation of those emissions to the exact product classification and imported quantity.
For downstream steel articles, precursor-material requirements and process boundaries add detail, and a generic certificate describing a company’s average footprint is not sufficient by itself. The immediate priority for businesses is a reconciled CN8 register, rather than another sector ranking. It should begin with EU member-state import data where origin is Serbia, limit 2025 flows to each legally applicable CN8 code and remove non-covered goods.
Until that extraction is complete, broad HS4-family figures remain screening proxies, not a complete audited CN8 CBAM import ledger.
Elevated by CBAM.Clarion Engineer