How CBAM certificate buying will actually work: Commission consults on sale and repurchase rules for February 2027

The European Commission opened a public feedback period on July 9, 2026 for the draft delegated regulation that sets out how CBAM certificate sales and repurchases will run from February 1, 2027. Feedback closes on August 6, 2026, and the Commission plans adoption in the fourth quarter of 2026. The draft act, based on Article 20(6) of Regulation (EU) 2023/956, concerns every authorized CBAM declarant in the EU: it fixes where purchase requests are entered, how payments flow, what each transaction costs, and how surplus certificates can be sold back.

The draft matters because certificate purchasing is the one part of the CBAM compliance chain that has never operated in practice. Importers have registered and calculated embedded emissions since January 2026, and two quarterly certificate prices have been published, but nobody has bought a certificate yet. This delegated regulation is the last major operational building block before the common central platform opens for sales on February 1, 2027. It is a draft under consultation, published as initiative 14132 on the Commission's Have Your Say portal, and it is not yet adopted law.

What the draft delegated regulation covers

The draft delegated regulation defines the mechanics of CBAM certificate sales and repurchases: declarants enter purchase and repurchase requests in the CBAM Registry, payments run in euro through a common central platform, and a fixed fee of €0.05 per certificate applies to each transaction. The act is a delegated regulation under Article 20(6) of Regulation (EU) 2023/956, not an implementing regulation, which means the European Parliament and the Council can still object to it before it enters into force.

Member states remain the sellers. The draft routes all sales solely through designated competent authorities, and trade press summaries of the draft published by Eurometal and SteelOrbis in mid-July report that it sets no quantitative limits on member-state sales. Certificates keep the design fixed in the basic regulation: each carries a unique ID, and certificates are non-transferable and non-tradable. No secondary market exists, so the only counterparty a declarant will ever face is the competent authority of its member state.

The table below summarizes the draft rules as published for feedback.

Purchase mechanics: registry requests, euro payments, and a €0.05 fee

A declarant buys certificates by entering a purchase request of 1 to 99,999 certificates in the CBAM Registry, then paying in euro through the common central platform, and the certificates are created in the account only after payment is confirmed. The mid-July trade press summaries add two operational details from the draft: payment for a purchase must be transferred on the same calendar day, and a purchase request cannot be amended after submission, although it can be withdrawn before payment.

The €0.05 fee is fixed per certificate regardless of the certificate price or the member state. At the Q2 2026 certificate price of €75.28/tCO₂e, the fee adds roughly 0.07 percent to the certificate cost. A maximum-size request of 99,999 certificates would move about €7.53 million through the platform and generate a fee just under €5,000. The CBAM certificate price tracker follows the official prices that these purchases will settle at.

The split architecture is deliberate. The registry handles declarations and certificate management, while the platform handles exclusively financial transactions, a separation the draft justifies on grounds of operational efficiency, digital security, and reduced data exposure. The platform must file daily reconciliation reports, monthly operational and fee reports, and an annual activity report to the Commission, and transaction data is retained for five years following the calendar year of the transaction.

Repurchase: one request per year, and it is final

The draft allows each declarant one repurchase request per year, and that request is irrevocable and non-amendable from the moment it is entered, before any authority review or payout. Repurchase is how declarants sell surplus certificates back to their member state, and surpluses will arise by design. The quarterly holding requirement obliges declarants to hold certificates covering at least 50 percent of the cumulative embedded emissions of their imports at the end of each quarter, and cautious buyers will overshoot that floor rather than risk falling under it.

According to the Eurometal and SteelOrbis summaries of the draft, additional repurchase requests are permitted only after declaration reviews, and repurchase approvals run within windows of 42 calendar days following April 1, July 1, or November 1. A declarant who misfiles its single annual request therefore has no correction path inside the same cycle.

Industry reaction: a two-system design with no undo button

Industry commentary published by Stainless Espresso on July 13, 2026 criticized three design choices in the draft: the split between the CBAM Registry and the payment platform, purchase requests that cannot be amended, and repurchase requests that are irrevocable before any review. The registry-platform split, the commentary argues, creates double the sources of error, because requests live in one system and money moves through another, without a unified interface or a testing environment for declarants. On the non-amendable requests, the authors warn: "A simple typing error forces a restart of the entire procedure or, in the worst case, means loss of capital."

The commentary also targeted the process itself. The feedback window runs until August 6, 2026, in the middle of the European summer break, and submissions on the Have Your Say portal are publicly visible, which the authors say discourages criticism from companies that depend on administrative approvals. They called for anonymizable submissions and urged SMEs and importers to respond despite those constraints.

What declarants should do before the deadlines

Authorized declarants face two dates: the feedback window closes on August 6, 2026, and certificate sales open on February 1, 2027. Four preparation steps follow from the draft.

1. Submit feedback by August 6, 2026 if the mechanics create operational problems for your business. The one-request-per-year repurchase limit and the non-amendable requests are exactly the kind of detail the consultation can still change.
2. Assign internal roles early. Requests sit in the registry while money moves through the platform, so compliance and treasury teams need a shared process before the first purchase, including same-day euro payment capability.
3. Budget the transaction cost. The €0.05 fee is small per certificate, but it is a new line item, and payment timing rules leave no room for slow internal approval chains.
4. Model certificate volumes now. The guide on how to buy CBAM certificates covers the purchase workflow, the overview of CBAM certificates covers holding and surrender, and the CBAM cost calculator converts import volumes into certificate counts.

Volume planning also depends on two decisions pending elsewhere. The proposed ETS Phase 5 revision that slows the CBAM phase-in would return 15 percent free allocation in 2028 and shrink certificate needs, and member states vote in September on which foreign carbon prices count against CBAM bills.

What happens next

The Commission plans to adopt the delegated regulation in the fourth quarter of 2026, after evaluating the feedback received by August 6, 2026. As a delegated act, it then passes to the European Parliament and the Council, which can object before it enters into force. Under the draft, the regulation enters into force on the third day after publication in the Official Journal and applies from February 1, 2027. Certificates bought from that date count toward the first annual CBAM declaration, due September 30, 2027, which covers calendar year 2026 imports.

For the full compliance chain from authorization to certificate surrender, read the EU CBAM guide.