NEWS: EU Deforestation Regulation Update

The EU Deforestation Regulation and What it Means for Businesses

Are you selling products in the EU? Then it's important to stay up-to-date on the EU Deforestation Regulation law that was passed in 2023, and continues to have ongoing implementation deadlines. We have your back here at Whalebacker, and strive to keep you informed. Let's get into it! 

What is the EUDR?
The EU Deforestation Regulation is a law banning specific commodities produced from 2021 on that are linked in any way to deforestation or forest degradation. More specifically, it requires companies to perform strict due diligence to comply, or their products cannot be sold or placed in the EU. This is an effort to help shift global markets toward more sustainable supply chains.

Let's break down the key aspects of the law: 

• The commodities affected are wood, cocoa, coffee, palm oil, rubber, soy, and cattle. This includes all products derived from these commodities.
  
• The country of origin affects the due diligence required. Countries are broken down into risk-based categories, with higher risk countries requiring more complicated compliance.
  
  
• Companies must ensure their products are not from land that was deforested or degraded after the year 2020.
  
  
• Compliance includes using geolocation to provide tracking of the commodities in question back to precise plots of land, proving all production was in compliance with the local laws of that area, and filing a due diligence statement for all products with the EU.

When does this go into effect?
Compliance requirement was scheduled to go into effect on Dec. 30th of this year (2025). As you can imagine, this has sent a lot of companies scrambling to better understand the due diligence requirements for their products, as they attempt to work with manufacturers to ensure their products can continue to be sold. But this brings us to the latest update!

The latest!
The European Parliament has voted to delay the implementation of the law to give companies more time to prepare to meet the regulation's requirements. This shifts the deadlines for the compliance to December 30th, 2026 for large corporations and June 30th, 2027 for businesses with fewer than 50 employees and earning less than $11.7 million annually in sales of the affected product. 

In addition to this change in the timeline, Parliament also voted to exempt printed products such as books and magazines. This is a key change for many of our clients, and we felt it important to share this news right away! We, of course, encourage businesses to continue to make environmentally responsible choices when sourcing materials and manufacturing these products, but for those who had concerns over the complexity of the due diligence required to prove this to the EU, we encourage you to take this moment to wipe the nervous sweat from your brow and take that big sigh of relief.