The European Parliament and the Council of the EU will negotiate in trilogue to reach agreement on the proposed revision of the deforestation-free products regulation (see EUROPE 13735/4). On Wednesday 26 November, Parliament adopted a position close to that of the EU Council, with a few additional amendments.
Like the EU Council, MEPs called for a further one-year postponement of the regulation, which would mean that it would apply from 30 December 2026 for large companies and 30 June 2027 for micro and small companies.
The revision clause requested by the EU Council from the Commission, so that the review takes place in April 2026, has also won the support of the European Parliament. Relief measures for micro and small producers in low-risk countries have been included.
Micro and small operators covered by the simplified scheme would only have to submit their simplified declaration once, and could limit their annual product quantity declaration to a single estimate. Micro and small operators will also be able to simply provide the postcode of their establishment, instead of sharing the geolocation of the plot or the postcode of the plot on which the products are grown.
Downstream operators will no longer be required to make a due diligence declaration in the IT system, but only to collect and retain the upstream operator’s reference numbers. The Commission wants to ask them to communicate this information down the supply chain. Believing that this would create too great an administrative burden, Parliament and the EU Council want to exempt them from this transmission.
Five amendments that go beyond the EU Council’s position were adopted on Wednesday 26 November. The main one concerns the exclusion of books from the scope of the regulation. In addition, the European Parliament, at the instigation of the Renew Europe group, is asking the Commission to set up a permanent stakeholder group, to improve communication between the competent authorities and the Commission regarding the IT system, not to impose fines in the event of IT problems and to clarify what it means by “establishment”, with regard to the postcode to be shared.
The EPP without the pro-European majority. On the eve of the vote, four days after a first failed attempt (see EUROPE 13757/2), the S&D and Renew Europe tried again to reach an agreement with the EPP. Pascal Canfin (Renew Europe, French) described this latest failure as “yet more bad news for Ursula von der Leyen’s coalition and for the spirit of compromise that lies at the heart of the EU’s history”.
On Wednesday, after the votes, Delara Burkhardt (S&D, German) deplored the fact that the EPP had overstepped its red lines, but reiterated the S&D’s determination not to give up “looking for compromises at the democratic centre for every law”.
The MEP is now concerned that the regulation will end up in “a spiral of postponement after postponement”, while the revision clause advocated by the co-legislators will have to be held in an unprecedented way even before the text comes into force.
The Greens/EFA and The Left had tabled an amendment to reject the text. As a member of the pro-European majority, the Greens/EFA group did not subscribe to the simplification logic adopted by Renew Europe and the S&D in the hope of convincing the EPP to limit the damage.
Kai Tegethoff (Greens/EFA, German) deplored Parliament’s position, which was not a “technical adjustment” but a “political choice that undermines our climate commitments, ridicules the EU on the international stage and betrays the many partners in Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay who are really fighting deforestation on the ground”.
The Greens/EFA are now calling on the Commission to withdraw its proposal in order to “protect the integrity of the EU regulation on deforestation”, said Marie Toussaint (Greens/EFA, French).
According to Delara Burkhardt, the European Commission will now have to be held to account, while its reopening of the regulation due to IT system problems is likely to end in a further postponement and further simplifications. A source from the Renew Europe group also told Agence Europe that the work would not stop there.
The co-legislators will have to come to an agreement in the coming weeks, before the regulation actually comes into force on 30 December. (Original version in French by Florent Servia)