In 2025, EU member states imported €1,150.3 million of electricity from Serbia, while three flat-steel product families accounted for more than €500 million, according to trade statistics. These flows are commercially significant for companies preparing for the European Union’s Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM). Broad customs codes can help identify goods for screening, but they do not constitute a list of products covered by the law.
Electricity trade, classified under HS271600 and EU CN 2716 00 00, totalled 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 its trade value cannot be directly compared with steel or aluminium tonnage to assess embedded emissions.
Steel and aluminium trade requires product-level checks
EU imports from Serbia of hot-rolled non-alloy flat steel under HS7208 were valued at $384.23 million, or 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 valued at about €55.4 million. Together, the three flat-steel families accounted for more than €500 million in reported imports.
The scale of these flows makes shipment-level carbon-data work a priority for companies trading the products. Aluminium imports also included a range of processed and fabricated goods, not just unwrought metal: plate, sheet and strip under HS7606 were worth approximately €148.7 million, containers and similar packaging under HS7612 €78.6 million, and other articles under HS7616 about €62 million.
Other aluminium imports included roughly €44 million of structures under HS7610 and approximately €41.4 million of bars and profiles under HS7604. These HS product-family values can help businesses set priorities for compliance work, but coverage of an individual product 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 if they 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. Broad HS headings therefore cannot be treated as the CBAM tariff list.
Importers need reconciled shipment and emissions records
Commercial data used for CBAM work should pair value with quantities, origin, producing installation, customs procedure, reporting importer and CN8 classification. Companies working through distributors have an urgent need to reconcile product codes with emissions data, because the importer must link the reported footprint to the exact goods and quantities brought into the EU.
A Serbian steel producer may provide a plant-level report for a coil, but the EU importer needs a defensible allocation of those emissions to the product classification and imported quantity. For downstream steel articles, precursor-material requirements and process boundaries add detail. A generic certificate describing a company’s average footprint is not sufficient by itself.
Importers cannot 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 immediate business priority is a reconciled CN8 register, rather than another sector ranking. It should begin with EU member-state import data where the origin is Serbia, limit 2025 flows to each legally applicable CN8 code and exclude goods that are not covered. Until that extraction is complete, broad HS4-family figures remain screening proxies, not a complete audited CN8 CBAM import ledger.
Elevated by CBAM by Clarion Engineer