The European Commission has U-turned on plans to delay its landmark anti-deforestation law by another year, instead setting out a series of new exemptions for small businesses, farmers, and major manufacturers.
Last month, the commission said that massive overuse of its in-house IT system needed to declare compliance with the bloc meant that it would be impossible to the law to come into effect from December 2025.
Having initially estimated that 100m due-diligence statements (DDS) would be lodged each year, EU officials now expect up to 1bn to be made by hundreds of thousands of registered operators.
Should the commission proposal be accepted by MEPs and ministers, the EU Deforestation Regulation (EUDR) would come into effect for large firms on 30 December, but with a six-month grace period for checks and enforcement of the due diligence requirements.
For small businesses and farmers, meanwhile, it will be delayed until December 2026.
The commission believes that large manufacturing firms or retailers, who sell the finished products such as chocolate, cocoa or timber, should also be exempted.
That means that only one submission in the EUDR IT system at a product's entry point in the market will be required for the entire supply chain.
In practice, chocolatiers such as Nestle or Ferrero, would not be required to submit due diligence statements, with the cocoa importers bringing beans into the EU being the only ones covered by the law.
The announcement, on Tuesday (21 October), adds to chaos surrounding the EUDR, which was supposed to have been implemented in January this year.
The new proposal "responds to real implementation challenges,", said EU environment commissioner Jessika Roswall, in a statement.
"It is not about lowering the ambition, it's about making the rules work in a better and smarter way because effective implementation matters," she added.
But there is little doubt that, just weeks after proposing a second one-year delay, that the chaos has hurt the commission's credibility.
Last month, a group of chocolatiers and other industries urged the commission not to delay the regulation further, warning that delays would punish companies who had prepared for compliance and would lead to more deforestation.
However, the new proposal offers lawmakers the opportunity to make additional amendments to the regulation, which could lead to more exemptions.
Christine Schneider, a German centre-right MEP, has said that she will introduce a ‘zero risk’ amendment that would exempt dozens of countries, including EU members, for most of the reporting standards.
"By opening up the whole deforestation regulation, the commission risks giving the right a free hand to hack away at this crucial legislation under the guise of deregulation,” said Virginijus Sinkevičius, a Green MEP from Lithuania and former environment commissioner.
The EUDR was designed to require sellers of products like beef, coffee, chocolate, palm oil and wood to demonstrate that their goods were traceable to land that had not been deforested after 31 December 2020.
The compliance burden for each country was based on a benchmarking system that was published by the commission in May, which categorises them as either 'high', 'standard' or 'low' risk.
But despite being adopted as a landmark law promoting sustainable business practices, with large majority support among EU lawmakers, it has come under fire from conservative MEPs and governments, who argue that it could damage the competitiveness of EU firms.
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Benjamin Fox is a seasoned reporter and editor, previously working for fellow Brussels publication Euractiv. His reporting has also been published in the Guardian, the East African, Euractiv, Private Eye and Africa Confidential, among others. He heads up the AU-EU section at EUobserver, based in Nairobi, Kenya.
Benjamin Fox is a seasoned reporter and editor, previously working for fellow Brussels publication Euractiv. His reporting has also been published in the Guardian, the East African, Euractiv, Private Eye and Africa Confidential, among others. He heads up the AU-EU section at EUobserver, based in Nairobi, Kenya.