The Commission’s turnaround on the EUDR looks like a Halloween prank. In fact, it’s much worse, because it’s not a joke: it’s the real. With a timing that suggests a very poor sense of reality from Brussels, they first said in September that the anti-deforestation regulation would be implemented in 2027, once it had been simplified, but on Oct. 21, after leaving companies for a month quiet about the idea of having an extra year to prepare for really difficult due diligence, as if nothing had happened, the Commission went back on its word: “For medium and large companies, the EUDR is a reality as early as Dec. 30, 2025”. In two months.
The Halloween prank
EuroChamber speaks of a Commission “disconnected with reality” that “damages the competitiveness of EU companies”. The competitiveness of beef leather companies comes out of the affair equally damaged. Because the supply chain has been induced by the Commission’s spin to lose a very precious month in the first place. Because it will now have to hurry to set up methods of transmitting information useful for due diligence with suppliers already further ahead with the work, when it could have arrived at the same result much better in 2027. And why, finally, it will be forced to shelve suppliers who, instead, at the dictates of the EUDR certainly are not ready by December 30. Giving up for bureaucratic reasons pathways built over the years on quality and without knowing if, and how, it will be able to reactivate the same relationships when the time is ripe. Quite a little joke.
Partner reactions
The history of the EUDR is troubled from the beginning: poorly written, without taking into account the peculiarities of the supply chain involved, the Regulation ended up completely missing its noble purpose, all while managing to enrage not only traders, but European governments and even more so those of non-European partner countries (all of them: from the US to Brazil).it’s to be seen how they will react when they find out that the Commission’s proposal partly simplifies the application of the EUDR for European production, but doesn’t introduce the same simplifications for products and raw materials from outside the EU. The news won’t fail to seem aggravating in the eyes of those who already challenged the EUDR to be a de facto protectionist barrier. Turbulent times are expected.
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