Trade unions are also on alert for the revision of the Emission Trading System (Ets), the European system for trading greenhouse gas emission allowances, which the EU launched in July. The sector is one of those energy-intensive ones on which the costs related to the Ets therefore weigh particularly heavily: paper, with the connected worlds of graphics, paper converting, publishing, communication.
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“The European Commission’s proposal to revise the Ets system must be amended to ensure that the path to climate neutrality by 2050 does not result in a loss of competitiveness for European industry and a transfer of production to countries with lower environmental standards and CO2 costs.” This is the position shared by Assocarta, Assografici, Slc-Cgil, Fistel Cisl, Uilfpc, and Ugl Chimici. With the loss of production inevitably meaning less employment.
Among the main critical points, the employers’ associations and trade unions argue, is the progressive reduction of protections for sectors exposed to so-called carbon leakage (the transfer of emissions elsewhere), such as the paper and processing industries, also through the new conditionalities provided for access to free allowances. The request is therefore to guarantee full protection to all companies actually exposed to the risk of relocation, freezing the reduction of benchmarks at the values set in 2025.
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Among other points on which the paper industry focuses attention are the compensation of indirect CO2 costs entrusted to the States, the asymmetry of exports to countries without charges equivalent to those of the Ets, the function of the Market Stability Reserve to stabilize the CO2 price. The issue of emission allowances and summer energy price increases remain concerns for the paper sector, which is also crucial for the circular economy linked to this material. However, the alarm is common to other industrial sectors. And the need to modify the mechanism has been conveyed by the Italian government itself.
“The July revision – comments Assovetro president Vitaliano Torno – although it welcomes some of the requests of the Italian and European production sectors, was too timid in addressing the issues of a regulatory framework that, far from being able to achieve the objectives it sets, could instead determine the breaking point for the entire manufacturing industry. This would also have consequences on the continent’s recycling capacity, a strategic lever of autonomy and environmental protection.”
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