The CBAM deadline nobody talks about: authorisation takes 120 days

Most CBAM coverage points at the same date: 30 September 2027, when the first annual declaration is due. It is a real deadline, and it is comfortably far away.

It is also the wrong one to worry about first.

There is a second clock, it started on 1 January 2026, and unlike the filing date it can stop your goods at the border. Almost nobody writes about it, because it isn't a filing deadline — it's a processing time.

The rule in one sentence

You must hold the status of authorised CBAM declarant before you cross 50 tonnes of CBAM goods in a calendar year — and the authority has up to 120 days to decide.

Not 120 days before your declaration. 120 days before the import that takes you over the line.

Why this catches people out

The threshold feels forgiving. Fifty tonnes a year sounds like a lot if you have never counted, and the carbon bill at 2026 phase-in rates is small enough to look like a rounding error. So the natural reaction is: we'll deal with it when we get there.

The problem is the order of operations.

1. Every import since 1 January 2026 counts. The 50 tonnes is cumulative across the calendar year, not per shipment and not from the day you noticed.
2. Authorisation takes 120 calendar days from the day the authority receives a complete application (Art. 4(1), Implementing Regulation (EU) 2025/486). If they come back with questions, the clock extends to 180 days.
3. The status has to exist before the crossing, not after. Germany's DEHSt puts it plainly: you need authorised-declarant status before you exceed the 50-tonne threshold, to avoid an import ban.

Put those together and the arithmetic is uncomfortable. Count 120 days forward from the day your application is complete — that is the earliest date your status can exist. Every tonne that would take you past 50 tonnes before that date is a tonne you are not permitted to import.

By September 2026 that sum has crossed a line worth naming out loud: an application completed now is decided in January 2027, which is no longer inside the 2026 import year at all. If your fourth quarter takes you past 50 tonnes, the question is not whether the timing is tight. It has gone.

You cannot fix that retroactively. The clock has already run.

The safety net that used to exist is gone

There was a provision that softened exactly this problem. Article 17(7a) let importers with a pending application keep importing above the threshold while they waited for a decision.

It only applied to applications filed by 31 March 2026. That date has passed. Applying now means waiting without cover.

This is the part that gets misread most often: people hear "31 March 2026" and conclude that authorisation itself closed. It did not — you can still apply, any day. What closed was the grace period for importing while you wait. Losing it makes applying more urgent, not pointless.

What happens if you cross without it

The penalty is not proportionate to the carbon. It is proportionate to the breach.

Crossing the threshold unauthorised is penalised at three to five times EUR 100 per tonne of CO₂e embedded in the goods (Art. 26(2) and (2a)), reduced only where the excess is 10% of the threshold or less.

For a mid-sized steel importer that is not a rounding error. Take 200 tonnes a year of imported steel: roughly 440 tonnes of embedded CO₂e, so a penalty in the region of EUR 130,000 to 220,000 — against a carbon bill of well under EUR 1,000 at 2026 phase-in rates.

That ratio, somewhere between 150× and 250×, is the actual reason to care about CBAM this year. Not the levy. The levy is small and will stay small for a while. The exposure comes from being on the wrong side of a status you could have applied for.

What to do this week

You do not need a consultant to work out where you stand. You need three numbers.

1. Add up what you have already imported this year. Only CBAM goods — iron and steel, aluminium, cement, fertilisers, hydrogen, electricity — and only from outside the EU. Net mass, in tonnes, since 1 January.

2. Project the rest of the year. Take your usual pattern and carry it forward. You are answering one question: do we cross 50 tonnes, and roughly when?

3. Compare that date with today plus 120 days. If your crossing date is earlier, you have a problem that only gets worse by waiting, and the application should go in immediately. If it is later, you have room — but less than the calendar suggests, because the 120 days only start once the application is complete.

If the honest answer to step 2 is "no idea", that is itself the finding. It means the number that decides your legal position is one nobody in the company is tracking.

Where this leaves the 2027 date

Nothing above changes the filing deadline. The first annual declaration is still due on 30 September 2027, certificates cannot be bought before 1 February 2027, and the definitive declaration format has not yet been published by the Commission.

But the evidence that declaration is made from — which goods, which origins, what mass, which supplier data — is being generated now, on every shipment that clears customs. That part is not waiting for Brussels.

The 2027 deadline is about paperwork you will assemble. The authorisation deadline is about whether you are allowed to keep importing while you assemble it.

Last reviewed 10 September 2026. This article explains the rules as we read them; it is not legal advice. Thresholds and penalties are set out in Regulation (EU) 2023/956 as amended, and in Implementing Regulation (EU) 2025/486. Check your own position with your customs agent or the competent authority in your member state — in Germany, the DEHSt.