Bureau Veritas announces CBAM accreditation, while the Commission's official list stays empty

The second announced CBAM verifier accreditation arrived on September 29, 2026, six days after the first. Bureau Veritas, the French testing, inspection, and certification group present in 140 countries, published a newsroom statement that it "receives accreditation for CBAM verification services." The announcement makes Bureau Veritas the first global TIC group to claim a CBAM accreditation, following EmiCert, the first accredited CBAM verifier, a Greek verification body that announced its ESYD accreditation on September 23.

The announcement also repeats a pattern that importers should notice. Checked on October 6, 2026, thirteen days after the EmiCert announcement, the European Commission's official list of accredited CBAM verifiers records zero entries, and the Commission's verification page still states that "the first CBAM verifiers are expected to receive CBAM accreditation around September 2026." Two accreditations have now been announced by the verifiers themselves. Neither can be confirmed on any official public list.

What Bureau Veritas announced

Bureau Veritas announced on September 29, 2026 that it has received accreditation to provide verification services under the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism, positioning the accreditation as an expansion of its global transition services portfolio. The statement itself cites no compliance dates; the context that gives it weight is the mandatory verification wave coming for importers, because actual emissions declared for 2026 imports must be verified by an accredited verifier before the first annual declaration on September 30, 2027.

Ken Smith, Vice President, Global Transition Services at Bureau Veritas, said: "Receiving accreditation for CBAM verification is a significant milestone for Bureau Veritas and for our clients worldwide. As organizations prepare for the next phase of CBAM implementation, they need a trusted partner that can provide independent assurance, technical expertise, and global support. This accreditation reinforces our commitment to helping businesses meet regulatory requirements with confidence while advancing transparency and credibility in carbon reporting."

The credentials behind the claim are real and relevant. Bureau Veritas holds years of accredited verification experience under the EU Emissions Trading System, performs accredited greenhouse gas verification and validation against ISO 14064 and ISO 14067, and operates under ISO 17029 and ISO 14065 competence standards. That is exactly the profile the Commission's accreditation drive targeted: CBAM accreditation is a separate, new accreditation, but the Commission aimed it at bodies with existing EU ETS verification scopes.

What the announcement does not say

The Bureau Veritas announcement names neither the national accreditation body that granted the accreditation, nor the Bureau Veritas legal entity that holds it, nor the scope of goods and sectors it covers. Those three omissions matter because each one is information an importer needs before signing a verification engagement.

Three facts are missing from the statement.

• The accrediting NAB. CBAM accreditation is granted country by country, by one of the national accreditation bodies, such as COFRAC in France, DAkkS in Germany, or Accredia in Italy. The announcement does not say which one acted.
• The accredited legal entity. Bureau Veritas is a group of national subsidiaries, and accreditation attaches to one legal entity, not to a brand. Which entity holds the certificate determines which national competent authority will decide its Registry registration.
• The scope. An accreditation can cover all six CBAM sectors or a subset. The announcement does not state what Bureau Veritas is accredited to verify.

The contrast with the first announcement is direct. EmiCert named its accreditor (the Hellenic Accreditation System, ESYD), its certificate number (No. 874-9), and its claimed scope (all six CBAM sectors). Bureau Veritas named none of the three, and its statement makes no first-or-second claim at all; the sequencing comes from the public record of announcement dates. The table below compares what each announced accreditation disclosed, as of October 6, 2026.

The official list is still empty, thirteen days on

The European Commission's verification page, checked on October 6, 2026, publishes no accredited CBAM verifier, thirteen days after EmiCert's announcement and seven days after Bureau Veritas' statement. The page where the Commission has said the official list will appear still carries only the sentence that first accreditations are "expected" around September 2026, a month that has now ended with two announcements and zero official confirmations.

The accreditation machinery itself is demonstrably moving. The Commission's state-of-play table, dated September 29, 2026, shows 24 national accreditation bodies agreed to provide CBAM accreditation and 16 ready to accept applications, up from 11 application-ready NABs in the July 10 edition. Seven NABs have agreed to accredit third-country verification bodies, and 5, in France, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, and Sweden, already accept third-country applications. The pipeline is filling; the output page is not.

For importers, the gap is a practical problem, not a technicality. An importer who wants to declare actual emissions for 2026 must contract an accredited verifier, and the only authoritative confirmation of accreditation is the official record. Today that importer can read two company announcements, one of which names no accreditor, and cannot cross-check either against the Commission's list. Until the list publishes its first entries, the accurate status of both accreditations is the same: announced by the verifier, not yet reflected in any official public list.

What importers can check today

Importers evaluating either body today should request the accreditation certificate directly, because no official list yet exists to check it against. A verification engagement signed now should name the accredited legal entity, the accrediting NAB, the certificate number, and the sector scope, the four data points the official list will eventually confirm.

Three steps follow for an importer planning to declare actual emissions.

1. Ask each candidate verifier for its certificate details in writing. EmiCert's disclosure set the benchmark; Bureau Veritas' announcement shows that a global brand name does not substitute for it.
2. Track the registration clock. An accredited verifier must register in the CBAM Registry within two months of accreditation, through the two-stage procedure described in our report on how CBAM verifier registration opened on September 1. A verifier that announced in late September must complete registration by late November.
3. Plan around January 2027. The Commission's timeline puts the first in-Registry verification reports in January 2027, and the first verification year requires a site visit at the installation. Our guide to finding a CBAM verifier sets out the full engagement checklist, and the supplier data request generator builds the installation data request a verifier will audit.

The second announcement in six days suggests the register will fill in waves through late 2026, as applications pending with the 16 application-ready NABs complete. The number that matters next is not the count of press releases. It is the moment the Commission's official list moves from zero to one, and our accredited CBAM verifiers tracker will record it when it does.