Negotiators from the European Parliament, led by Christophe Hansen (EPP, Luxembourgian), the EU Council and the European Commission will be keen to reach an agreement when they meet again on Monday 5 December in the evening for a third ‘trilogue’ on the proposed Regulation which aims to minimise the risk of global deforestation and forest degradation associated with products placed on the EU market or exported from the EU.
This proposal was presented in November 2021 by the European Commission to enable the EU to take responsibility by introducing due diligence along the supply chain of six commodities (palm oil, beef, timber, coffee, cocoa and soy), to start with.
For the time being, the negotiators have agreed on one thing: under this future Regulation, only products that can be proven - by means of a certificate based on geolocation data - not to contribute to global deforestation can be placed on the EU market.
However, agreement has yet to be reached on the date before which deforestation would not be taken into account (Parliament wants 31 December 2019, bringing forward the date proposed by the Commission by one year, while the EU Council has postponed it by one year). Furthermore, there is still disagreement as to the date of entry into force of the Regulation.
This third political trilogue will also have to decide on the following issues:
Scope. It is still to be decided whether to stick to the original six products and the derivatives added by the EU Council, while Parliament is calling for the addition of rubber and maize, other livestock than beef and other wooded ecosystems than just forests (savannahs, mangroves and drylands), as well as an assessment in one year’s time of whether to include other threatened sensitive ecosystems (see EUROPE 12991/14).
Forest degradation. Negotiators will also have to agree on this term, the scope of which has been weakened by the EU Council’s clarification of its definition (see EUROPE 12981/9).
Inclusion of the financial sector. Parliament wants to impose reasonable due diligence obligations on European financial institutions to ensure that companies that can no longer supply the EU market with deforestation-related products no longer receive support from EU-based financial institutions, but Christophe Hansen is sceptical and Member States are rigorously opposed. It is therefore unlikely that Parliament will win the case.
Protection of indigenous land rights. Parliament calls for importers and exporters of forest products at risk to verify and certify that their products do not come from areas that have been exploited against the will of indigenous communities. The EU Council is willing to stipulate this for producer countries that already have (indigenous) land rights laws.
There are still many issues to be resolved, which bodes well for a long ‘trilogue’, but on “this major text of the European Green Deal, there is the will to reach a conclusion before the COP15 on biodiversity”, whose high-level segment starts on 12 December, stressed the Chairman of the European Parliament’s Committee on Environment, Pascal Canfin (Renew Europe, French) on Friday.
It should be recalled that Parliament is at the origin of this proposal for a Regulation, having adopted, in October 2020, a legislative own-initiative report calling for a legally binding framework (see EUROPE 12586/21).
Ahead of the trilogue, Delara Burkhardt (S&D, German), who was rapporteur at the time, said “It’s crazy! So far, it’s perfectly legal to cut down the Amazon rainforest, sell the wood in the EU and keep cattle on the freed-up land to later sell the steaks in European supermarkets. This could soon be over”. (Original version in French by Aminata Niang)