Plan your CBAM verification: every step, dated back from your buyers' deadline
Your EU buyers can declare your own emissions instead of the marked-up EU default value only with a verification report from an accredited verifier. Answer three questions to see what to do and by when, and add the dates to your calendar.
Verification report needed by 30 June 2027.
Your plant
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Your verification plan for 2026
In the first year a plant is verified, the verifier must visit it in person. A virtual visit or no visit is possible only from the next year, if the verifier decides so.
Through 31 December 2026
Keep monthly records for the whole year
Fuel bills, meter readings, production registers and purchases, month by month, for the year being verified.
By 27 January 2027
Write your monitoring plan
How you measure fuels, production and bought materials. The verifier reads it before quoting, and checks your year against it.
By 27 January 2027
Ask two or three accredited verifiers for quotes
Send your monitoring plan, the goods and the plant's size. Ask for the accreditation certificate (CBAM, your sector), the days on site and the price.
By 24 February 2027
Sign with a verifier and fix the visit date
Verifiers are few and every exporter needs them in the same months, so book well ahead.
By 21 April 2027
Collect your suppliers' verified figures
For the steel or aluminium you buy in: each mill's verified embedded emissions. Without them, the EU default value counts for those inputs.
By 21 April 2027
Finish the emissions report and evidence for the year
The year's figures per good, with every bill and register behind them, in the Commission's communication template.
By 5 May 2027
Site visit and the verifier's review
The verifier visits the plant, checks the figures against the evidence and asks for corrections.
By 16 June 2027
Verification report issued
Check that it covers every good you sell to the EU and the whole year.
By 30 June 2027
Send the verified figures to your EU buyers
The verification report and the filled communication template, so they can declare your figures instead of the EU default value.
The time between steps is our planning estimate, not a rule: report issued 2 weeks before your buyers need it, 6 weeks for the visit and review, report and evidence ready 2 weeks before that, verifier signed 10 weeks before the visit, quotes 4 weeks before signing. Ask your verifier for its own timetable.
Why the date matters
Your buyers declare each year's imports by 30 September of the next year: for goods imported in 2026, by 30 September 2027. Without your verified figure by then, they must declare the EU default value for your country plus a mark-up of 10% for 2026 imports, 20% for 2027 and 30% from 2028, and they pay for the difference. Most buyers want the figures well before the deadline to check them, so this planner aims for 30 June unless you choose otherwise.
The verification can only start once the year is over and its data is complete, so the work falls between January and June, when every exporter needs a verifier at once.
Finding an accredited verifier
Only verifiers accredited for CBAM by a national accreditation body of an EU or EEA country can verify. The Commission will publish the list of accredited verifiers on its CBAM verification page; until then, ask each verifier for its CBAM accreditation certificate and check that it covers your sector. Our guide CBAM verifiers: who can verify and where to find one lists the accreditation bodies that accredit verifiers outside the EU.
Before the visit, work through the verification checklist, and see whether verification pays for itself with the own-emissions calculator.
More free tools
- Cost calculatorWhat your EU buyer pays for one product, year by year to 2034.
- Is my product covered?Type an HS or CN code: is it covered by CBAM?
- CBAM readiness checkTen questions: how ready you are, and what to do next.
- Products covered from 2028Will your product be added from 2028? Three EU proposals compared.
- Emissions calculatorYour plant's own emissions per tonne, against the EU default.
- Compare metal sourcesWhich country's steel or aluminium has the lowest default value.
- CBAM deadlinesEvery CBAM date to 2034, as a calendar file.
- Check your communication templateCheck your filled-in Commission template before you send it.
- CBAM monitoring plan templateA Word draft of your plant's monitoring plan, with all 22 elements.
- CBAM data inventory workbookA 12-month Excel workbook for your plant's production, fuels and precursors.
- Ask your supplier for emissions dataA ready letter asking your mill for emissions data.
- Emissions summary for your EU buyerA one-page emissions summary PDF for your EU customer.
- Verification checklistThe records a verifier will ask for, as a printable list.
Dates from Regulation (EU) 2023/956 as amended by Regulation (EU) 2025/2083 (declaration by 30 September); site visits from Implementing Regulation (EU) 2025/2546 and Delegated Regulation (EU) 2025/2551. The time between steps is our estimate. A planning aid, not legal advice; see the disclaimer. How the figures are calculated