The European Commission proposes to provide stakeholders with an additional 12 months for the phased implementation of the EU Deforestation Regulation (EUDR).
The relevant message was published on the agency's website.
If the European Parliament and the Council accept this proposal, the EU Deforestation Regulation will come into force on December 30, 2025 for large companies and June 30, 2026 for micro and small enterprises.
“As all the implementation tools are technically ready, the additional 12 months can serve as a phasing-in period to ensure proper and effective implementation,” the Commission said.
The agency also presented new Guidance on EU Deforestation Regulation, which will provide additional clarity to companies and law enforcement agencies in applying the rules. The document has 11 sections covering various issues, such as:
- requirements for legality;
- terms of application;
- agricultural use;
- clarification regarding the scope of product application.
All this is supported by real scenarios.
The European Commission has also published the principles of the methodology it will use to benchmark the EUDR. It will be used to classify countries into low, standard and high risk groups. This is necessary to facilitate the processes of due diligence of operators and to enable competent authorities to effectively monitor and enforce compliance.
According to the applied methodology, the vast majority of countries in the world will be classified as "low risk". This will make it possible to focus collective efforts where the problems of deforestation are most acute.
The department said that the Information System, in which enterprises will register their applications for comprehensive verification, will be ready to accept registrations at the beginning of November, and to be fully operational in December. Operators and traders will be able to register and submit due diligence applications before the Regulation enters into force.
The Commission acknowledged that 3 months before the planned implementation date, some global partners repeatedly expressed concerns about the state of their readiness, most recently during the week of the UN General Assembly in New York. In addition, officials noted that the state of training among stakeholders in Europe is also uneven.
As a reminder, legislators adopted the European Union Deforestation Regulation (EUDR) in 2023 with an overwhelming majority of votes in both the Parliament and the Council. It is designed to ensure that a range of key products placed on the EU market no longer contribute to deforestation and forest degradation in the EU and elsewhere in the world.
Earlier, EcoPolitic told, that 28 organizations representing European producers of raw materials and various industries, in their joint statement urged wait until the implementation of this Regulation.
