The European Parliament’s environment committee will vote on reforms to the EU Emissions Trading System (EU ETS) on 1st December 2026

• European Parliament MEP Liese said parliamentary groups remain sharply divided over carbon market reform

Committee-stage votes on ETS reform are the point where allowance supply expectations first get priced, and the pattern from past reform rounds is that the market moves on the trajectory of the cap and any adjustment to the Market Stability Reserve rather than on the headline vote itself. Division among parliamentary groups at this stage is the norm, not the exception; prior ETS revisions have tended to leave committee with a narrow or contested mandate, with the real shape settled later in trilogue between Parliament, Council and Commission. The distinction that matters for EUA pricing is between changes that tighten near-term supply, such as MSR intake adjustments or accelerated cap declines, and changes to the system's perimeter, such as sector scope or the treatment of free allocation, which trade differently and over longer horizons. Rapporteur Liese's track record is as a long-standing ETS negotiator on the environment committee, so the signalling carries weight on where the centre of the file sits. The follow-ons are the committee vote outcome itself, any compromise amendments agreed beforehand, and then the plenary and Council positions, since divergence between the institutions has historically extended these files well beyond the initial vote date.