The European Commission is considering a further one-year postponement (see EUROPE 13549/34) of the regulation to combat imported deforestation. The unexpected announcement was made by European Commissioner Jessika Roswall on Tuesday 23 September, on the sidelines of the ‘Agriculture’ Council. The European Parliament, unaware of anything, was informed that very morning in a letter addressed to the Chair of the European Parliament’s Committee on the Environment, Antonio Decaro.
The aim of the European Union Regulation on deforestation-free products (EUDR) is to ensure that products sold in the EU do not come from deforested or degraded land post-2020. It requires importers of palm oil, coffee, cocoa, livestock, timber and rubber to demonstrate that these products have not been produced on deforested land in order to be sold on the EU market.
The reason put forward is technical: the IT system that is supposed to hold the data of stakeholders is not ready for use, even though the regulation is due to come into force on 31 December.
The Commission is concerned that the number of operations expected between economic operators and the IT system could “lead to the system slowing down to unacceptable levels or even to repeated and long-lasting disruptions”, explained Commissioner Roswall. The European Commission considered that these technical problems could, as they stood, compromise “the achievement of the objectives of EUDR”, since “operators would be unable to register as economic operators, introduce their Due Diligence Statements, retrieve the necessary information from the IT system, or provide the necessary information for customs purposes where relevant”.
Could this faulty IT system be the tree that hides the forest? Jessika Roswall opened the door to further negotiations on the regulation, adding that the Commission would “also have to discuss the various simplification measures with the ministers and the European Parliament”, before specifying that it was “too early to say” whether there would be any question, for example, of adding a ‘risk-free’ country category to the three existing categories (low, standard and high risk).
By submitting a further postponement of the text to the Council of the EU and the European Parliament, the Commission is giving them the opportunity to amend it.
However, pressure to “simplify” the regulation has come from all sides in recent months: - a letter to the Commission from eighteen EU Member States (see EUROPE 13675/9) at the beginning of July; - sixteen agricultural organisations, which have asked the Commission to include the regulation in its work to simplify environmental legislation (the environment ‘omnibus’ is expected this autumn - see EUROPE 13676/34); - from the European Parliament, under the impetus of right-wing (European People’s Party) and far-right (Patriots for Europe) groups, which asked the Commission to repeal the implementing act for the regulation (see EUROPE 13677/4).
Welcoming the European Commission’s proposed postponement on Tuesday 23 September, the EPP was quick to point out the “necessary revision” of the legislation, giving priority to the introduction of a category of ‘risk-free’ countries. The EPP intends to exempt forest owners and farmers in European and third countries “where clear guidelines are in place and deforestation is not taking place” from any obligation to declare, announced Peter Liese MEP (EPP, German) in no uncertain terms.
The Commission asserted that this proposed postponement was based solely on technical considerations. However, it did not specify whether this initiative to postpone the deadline by one year would be withdrawn if the co-legislators were to seek to modify its core content. By refusing to answer, the institution is leaving doubt.
Marie Toussaint (Greens/EFA, French), Delara Burkhardt (S&D, German) and Pascal Canfin (Renew Europe, French) each saw this technical failure as “a pretext”.
“Receiving this news on the very day we learn of the signing of a free trade agreement with Indonesia favouring palm oil is more than disturbing”, said Marie Toussaint. “Maybe it’s a coincidence, maybe it’s not”, declared Pascal Canfin, extending the parallel to the Mercosur agreement, of which Brazil is a member (which, like Indonesia, is “one of the fiercest opponents of the text”), and to the trade agreement with the United States.
Indonesia and Brazil will have to comply with the “chapters [of the EU-Indonesia and Mercosur agreements] that concern sustainable development”, said a Commission spokesperson, without guaranteeing that no changes to the regulation against imported deforestation would accompany its postponement.
Almost a year after the first proposal to postpone the text (see EUROPE 13497/8), on 2 October 2024, the European institutions find themselves in the same situation: either, caught up in the passage of time, the institutions will, as they did last year, “validate the postponement by one year, but no more”, Pascal Canfin analysed, or a majority in the EU Council will allow “everything to be reopened” which seems to him, at this stage, “unlikely”.
Whatever the outcome, the MEP from the Renew Europe group pointed out that the European Commission had been given several years to prepare its IT system. A further postponement would, whatever happens, represent “a serious setback for environmental policy”, according to Delara Burkhardt, while “every day lost in implementing [the regulation] (...) means thousands of hectares of forest destroyed”, pointed out Marie Toussaint.
To see the letter: https://aeur.eu/f/ikt (Original version in French by Florent Servia)