Hi there, welcome back to MLEX's weekly regulatory affairs podcast. I'm James Panicki,

Mlex's Asia Pacific Senior Editor. It's great to be back in your feed wherever you may be listening to us today.

Now, any talk of introducing tariffs is always going to be politically charged, particularly at the

moment with protectionist sentiment on the rise and the US in the midst of a presidential election campaign,

which is why growing support in the European Union for plans

to push ahead with a levy on carbon-intensive imports is likely to spark plenty of controversy

over the next 12 months. The levy is designed to protect domestic industry from carbon leakage.

That's when EU industry moves production to other

jurisdictions to sidestep European environmental standards. And we'll discuss how this may

yet play out in the US context a bit later on. But first up, we're joined by Julia Bedini,

an MLEX energy reporter based in Brussels, who has been covering this issue

very closely.

Now, Julia, to start with, where does this idea of imposing an EU carbon tariff on imports

actually come from?

So, well, James, the idea of introducing some kind of carbon pricing measure at the bloc's border

has been around for a while now.

France, for example, has long advocated for it, especially in light of the toughening of EU

climate regulation in recent years. But it only took shape at the EU's top table last year, when European Commission President

Osula von der Leyen included this measure in her political guidelines for her five-year mandate.

And that actually marked a significant change from the past because the EU's executive had

traditionally opposed this idea and it also rebuffed calls from

various industrial companies claiming that they actually needed such a measure to compete on

...