The ongoing saga around the introduction of the EU Deforestation Regulation (EUDR) has been a salutary lesson in how NOT to make policy.
The basic principles of the EUDR – to regulate trade in forest risk commodities to curb deforestation and encourage better governance at source – were welcomed by everyone. Everyone knows agricultural expansion is the biggest cause of deforestation globally, so targeting key agricultural forest risk commodities is a good, well accepted idea.
However, the policy makers did not marry up regulatory development with the way each of these commodity markets actually operates. There seemed to be little consultation with industries involved, little attempt to understand the complexity of their supply chains, before then trying to shoe-horn all of them into a onesize- fits-all data gathering and due diligence model.
Needless to say, there has been backlash, back pedalling and delays since it was first announced. From a great idea with cross-society consensus, there are now recriminations, delays and disagreements within supply chains worldwide.
As the problems with the EUDR became apparent, and perhaps not wanting to upset the food and farming sectors in an election year, the European Commission (EC) first pushed back the EUDR 12 months from its original introduction date of December 2024.
In the interim, major nations including the US, China, Brazil and Indonesia have claimed the regulation is an unfair barrier to trade. The country deforestation risk benchmarking system also seemed to satisfy nobody, with only a small number of countries being classified high risk, and the rest standard or low.
From here, even European sawmillers – albeit with exceptions among the larger groups who had done the requisite preparation – took a stance against the measures. Many felt the extra due diligence measures, particularly gathering GPS data on provenance was too much for smaller companies.
Then in September the EC first announced the EUDR would be delayed another 12 months, due to unpreparedness of the regulation’s IT system. Now they’ve said that it will be introduced in December 2025 but for larger companies only and with a six-month grace period.
All this confusion does nobody any favours. The Commission effectively smashed the pro EUDR consensus and now faces opposition from industry and NGOs alike.
The delay and dithering also causes a lack of confidence in the forest sector. Any prospective investor will want to know there is a stable regulatory environment, so this inability to get things working has a negative effect on forests themselves.
It’s a real shame because there was a lot of industry and NGO goodwill behind the idea of the regulation. But there seems to have been little thought about the practical implications and very little political goodwill to achieve it. I don’t know where this will end up now, but it may require a rethink focusing on the original aims and objectives but with a greater understanding of how supply chains and markets currently operate. I hope we get a meaningful outcome soon!
