Fianna Fáil MEP Cynthia Ní Mhurchú has called on the European Commission to provisionally “exempt fertilisers” from its new carbon tariff scheme. 

The MEP said that Irish farmers are facing “rising fertiliser costs and potential supply shortages following the escalating conflict in the Middle East”.

Ní Mhurchú has called for fertilisers to be “temporarily suspended from the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM)".

The CBAM is effectively a tax on imports of carbon-intensive products into the EU. This includes fertiliser.

Ní Mhurchú said she met with the commission's tax services in December last year to raise the case for excluding fertilisers from the CBAM mechanism “given the significant price pressures already faced by farmers”.

According to the MEP for the South constituency, the situation in the Middle East “highlights the vulnerability of Ireland’s heavy reliance on imported fertilisers such as nitrogen, in particular when you consider that Russia is also a large supplier of fertiliser products”. 

‘Disruption’

Ní Mhurchú added: “The war in Iran is a clear supply-side risk for Irish agriculture.

“We cannot have a farming system that is dependent on inputs coming from volatile regions of the world because when supply chains are disrupted, the cost ultimately works its way through the food chain and onto supermarket shelves.”

Ní Mhurchú said she has written to EU Agriculture Commissioner Christophe Hansen “echoing the call from multiple EU countries asking for an immediate suspension of the CBAM mechanism on fertilisers until the situation in the Middle East is resolved”. 

The MEP added that the EU Commission has “already implemented legislative changes that would allow them to suspend the tariff in the event of serious and unforeseen circumstances harming the bloc’s internal market”.