On Monday 12 May, the committee of Member State experts approved the proposal for an implementing act on the classification of countries at risk. But the list will only be made public “when the implementing act is adopted, before the end of June”, warned Maciej Berestecki, the European Commission’s spokesman on environmental issues, on Tuesday 13 May.
Belarus, North Korea, Myanmar and Russia will be included in the ‘high-risk’ category, according to information obtained by Euractiv. Exporting countries such as Brazil, Malaysia and Indonesia are currently classified as ‘standard’ risk countries. EU Member States will uniformly be considered ‘low’ risk. A source close to the case confirmed all this information to Agence Europe.
MEPs were able to consult the draft impact assessment at the European Parliament in Strasbourg during the first May 2025 plenary session. The Commission was cautious in classifying the risks, because of “fairly old’ data (from 2020) from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), said our source. New data from the FAO by the end of the year should enable the ranking to be updated.
Delara Burkhardt (Greens/EFA, German), rapporteur for the text, said that Parliament had to “exert considerable pressure to get the Commission to finally decide to act”. Welcoming the existence of a ranking, the MEP pointed out that it should be “regularly updated in the light of new data”, i.e. that due diligence rules will not be the same for companies from countries with a ‘high’, ‘standard’ and ‘low’ risk of deforestation. Neither are the controls.
As a reminder, the EU Deforestation Regulation (EUDR) bans imports into the EU of products (palm oil, beef, soya, coffee, etc.) whose production has contributed to forest degradation after 2020 (see EUROPE 13538/1). (Original version in French by Florent Servia)