Energy Community releases 2025 CBAM Readiness Tracker amid countdown to EU’s Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism

With only ten weeks to go before CBAM takes effect in its definitive phase, the Energy Community’s 2025 CBAM Readiness Tracker highlights steady progress and shared priorities for a clean, integrated energy transition. 

With the European Union’s Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) entering its definitive phase in January 2026, the Energy Community Secretariat’s 2025 CBAM Readiness Tracker finds that Energy Community Contracting Parties (Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Georgia, Kosovo*, Moldova, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Serbia, and Ukraine) are making steady progress on electricity market coupling with the EU and on the roll-out of clean energy  — both vital to ensure that the Energy Community’s markets remain part of the EU's low-carbon future.

This progress reflects the overarching objective of the Energy Community Treaty: to create a single regulatory space for energy trade and cooperation that extends the EU internal market to its neighbours, while ensuring stability, security of supply, and environmental sustainability. 

“CBAM should serve as a bridge into the European Union, not a barrier,” affirmed Artur Lorkowski, Director of the Energy Community Secretariat. “The progress reflected in this year’s Tracker underlines that CBAM can drive—not deter—regional cooperation on the energy transition.” 

While no Contracting Party currently qualifies for an exemption to CBAM, the 2025 Tracker shows that reforms are accelerating. In 2024 alone, carbon intensity across the Contracting Parties’ power sectors fell by an average of 11%, while renewable capacity (excluding large hydro) expanded by more than 50% between 2020 and 2024 — driven largely by competitive auctions — to reach 5.1 GW.   

Meanwhile, on electricity market integration — itself a pre-condition for a CBAM exemption — Serbia, Moldova, North Macedonia, and Montenegro are approaching a “point of no return,”  on the path to coupling with the EU’s internal electricity market even before accession. In parallel, all but one of the Contracting Parties have expressed the intention to adopt a domestic carbon pricing instrument — whether an emissions trading scheme or a carbon tax — to internalise CO₂ costs and eventually align with EU climate policies. 

 Together, these efforts signal a growing readiness across the Energy Community to turn CBAM  into a catalyst for deeper regional energy market integration and decarbonisation. 

To track ongoing developments, the Secretariat is planning to complement its annual CBAM Readiness Tracker with quarterly electricity market monitoring as the mechanism’s definitive phase takes effect.