The postponement and the additional simplifications that the EU Council will be defending in the revision of the regulation to combat imported deforestation (EUDR) have left the European Commissioner for Clean Transition, Teresa Ribera, bitter.
On Thursday 20 November, the day after the EU Member States adopted their negotiating mandate (see EUROPE 13755/12), the Vice-President of the European Commission said she could not “hide [her] deep disappointment and [her] frustration” in a post on the BlueSky social network. In her view, “monitoring deforestation is essential to prevent it”.
Contacted by Agence Europe, the office of the European Commissioner for the Environment, Jessika Roswall, declined to comment, as the legislative process is ongoing. From the ranks of the S&D, Teresa Ribera, who opposed a further postponement and simplification of the EUDR regulation, is more isolated in the European Commission.
“Commissioner Roswall has provided almost no justification to explain why she has opened this Pandora’s box,” pointed out Gerber-Jan Gerbrandy (Renew Europe, Dutch), after the EU Council had adopted its negotiating mandate.
The Dutch MEP and his colleague Pascal Canfin (Renew Europe, French) had taken the view that there were technical solutions to the IT problems cited by the European Commission and that they could be deployed without reopening the text (see EUROPE 13731/8).
From now on, “Jessika Roswall will have to answer for her actions if the EUDR ends up being derailed, as the current state of affairs indicates ,” said Gerben-Jan Gerbrandy. According to the MEP, companies had already prepared to apply the EUDR and, as well as “rewarding the laggards and obstructionists”, the postponement will add to the uncertainty of economic operators.
Nestlé, Ferrero, Olam Agri, Precious Woods and other companies said no more in a joint statement on Monday 17 November: any postponement, pause or further simplification would “prolong the current legal and economic uncertainty”. This back-and-forth undermines the confidence of economic operators in the European institutions and undermines its “credibility”, according to the signatories.
These companies are proposing an alternative: to maintain the application of the regulation until the end of 2025, “giving all companies the opportunity to test and learn without being penalised”. Gerben-Jan Gerbrandy defends the extension to one year of the six-month “grace period” that the Commission has proposed to grant to medium-sized and large companies. (Original version in French by Florent Servia)