EUDR : THE EU Deforestation Regulation
Regulation (EU) 2023/1115 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 31 May 2023 on the making available on the Union market and the export from the Union of certain commodities and products associated with deforestation and forest degradation, and repealing Regulation (EU) No 995/2010 (EUDR), was published in the Official Journal of the European Union on 9 June 2023.
It was amended by Regulation (EU) 2024/3234 of 19 December 2024 as regards its date of application.
The Regulation aims to prohibit the placing on the market or the export from the European market of products that have contributed to deforestation or forest degradation after 31 December 2020.
The scope of the Regulation covers seven commodities: coffee, cocoa, rubber, palm oil, soy, beef and wood, as well as certain derived products such as leather, charcoal.
The customs nomenclatures of the products concerned are listed in Annex I of the EUDR.
Deforestation refers to the conversion of “forests”, as defined by the FAO, to agricultural use, while forest degradation is defined on the basis of various criteria relating to structural changes in forest cover.
Traceability and transparency are at the core of the proposed framework, with the aim of making the sustainability of supply chains a new standard.
The Regulation requires the companies concerned (operators and traders as defined in Article 2 of the Regulation) to ensure that the products they export, place on the market or make available on the market present no or only a negligible risk of deforestation. In particular, they must geolocate the origin of the products down to the production plots.
Deforestation refers to the conversion of “forests”, as defined by the FAO, to agricultural use, while forest degradation is defined on the basis of various criteria relating to structural changes in forest cover.
Traceability and transparency are at the core of the framework, with the aim of making the sustainability of supply chains a new standard.
In accordance with the EUDR, as amended by the EUDR simplification Regulation, only operators placing products on the market for the first time or exporting them are required to ensure that the products concerned are deforestation-free and present no or only a negligible risk of deforestation, in line with Article 3.
These operators must exercise due diligence in accordance with the Regulation and submit a due diligence statement or, where applicable, a simplified declaration before placing the products on the market or exporting them. This includes identifying the place of production and, in principle, geolocating the production plots, subject to the simplified regimes provided for certain categories of operators.
Under the simplification rules, downstream operators and traders are not required to carry out due diligence or to geolocate production plots.
Only the first downstream operator or trader in the supply chain is required to collect and retain the due diligence reference numbers or the simplified declaration identifiers associated with the products concerned, in order to ensure traceability throughout the supply chain.