With the EU planning to invest €1 trillion to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050, a ‘carbon curtain’ of protective tariffs may grow up to protect the EU’s ‘clean’ products from competing products made from ‘dirty’ energy sources, such as coal or nuclear. “If others will not move in the same direction, we will have to protect the European Union against distortion of competition,” Frans Timmermans, the European Commission’s vice president for the European Green Deal, said last month. As the EU prepares a ‘carbon border policy’ Timmermans argued: “It’s a matter of survival of our industry. So, if others will not move in the same direction, we will have to protect the European Union against distortion of competition and against the risk of carbon leakage.”