Italy calls for suspension of carbon price in major attack on EU climate policy
The call would allow businesses to pollute for free, undermining the bloc’s longstanding emissions trading scheme.
February 26, 2026 3:56 pm CET
ROME — The Italian government wants the European Union to hit pause on its flagship climate law, the 20-year-old Emissions Trading System, in the latest in a flurry of attacks on the bloc's efforts to slow global warming.
Italy had already announced plans to subsidize power companies in a way that would undermine the core idea of the ETS: Making polluters pay for their planet-warming emissions. But on Thursday it went further, demanding Brussels suspend the mechanism entirely ahead of a broader review of the policy later this year.
"The ETS mechanism, as currently designed, is nothing more than a tax, a levy on energy-intensive companies," Italian Industry Minister Adolfo Urso told reporters upon arriving at Thursday’s meeting of economy and industry ministers in Brussels.
"It is necessary to revise it substantially … To do this properly, the ETS mechanism must be suspended pending a reform," he added.
It was an extraordinary attack on the EU's most powerful weapon for tackling climate change, and suggests the consensus that has made the bloc among the world’s most climate-friendly jurisdictions is fraying.
https://www.politico.eu/article/italy-c ... -overhaul/
