Comment: The EU needs to stand firm against the countries and companies hellbent on weakening its pioneering regulation to stop commodities harming forests
Nicole Polsterer is sustainable production and consumption campaigner at forests and rights NGO Fern.
The rumours were swirling for months, but when the news broke on October 2, it came abruptly and without warning.
Just a week earlier, the European Commission insisted that it had no plans to delay implementing the EU Deforestation Regulation (EUDR), the so-called ‘jewel’ in its flagship Green Deal, which aims to transform the EU into a low-carbon economy.
But at lunchtime on Tuesday, it made a sharp volte face, proposing a one-year delay to the application of the law, which was supposed to happen at the end of December, claiming the need to support companies and countries to better prepare for it.
The announcement prompted justified outrage, as well as fears that this marks a weakening of the EU’s resolve to confront the supreme challenge of our age: protecting nature and the climate.
The first law of its kind in the world, the EUDR was approved to great fanfare and on the back of a huge democratic mandate in June 2023.
It aims to address the biggest driver of deforestation on the planet: clearing land for agricultural production. Under the law, companies wanting access to the EU market must prove that products made from cattle, wood, cocoa, soy, palm oil, coffee and rubber are deforestation-free.
But the praise that greeted the law was replaced in recent months by a sometimes-ferocious backlash, strongly countered by the companies and countries that have already invested time and money to be ready for the December 30 deadline.
Those standing up for the EUDR include many of those who would be deeply affected, including the world’s biggest cocoa producers Ghana and Cote d’Ivoire, major chocolate companies (Ferrero, Mars Wrigley, Mondelēz International and Nestlé), as well as Indigenous groups and NGOs from around the globe, who see the law’s potential not just to end destructive forest-clearing, but to help safeguard Indigenous Peoples’ and local communities’ territorial rights.
In the end, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen caved in to industry and political pressure and opted to delay the law’s implementation. Some of the ramifications of her decision are strikingly obvious. Others will become clearer over time.
High stakes
One obvious consequence is for the world’s forests.
As the investigative NGO Earthsight points out, a 12-month delay will mean, based on the EU’s own studies, that an estimated 2,300 km2 of forest will be destroyed – an area nearly the size of Luxembourg. For every minute the law is delayed, another football pitch-sized amount of forest will be cleared, producing in a year emissions equivalent to those from 18 million cars.
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It’s also clear that many of those who pushed for this delay want to water down or abandon the EUDR altogether. They will be determined to use the Commission’s proposal as an opportunity to achieve this. They must not be allowed to succeed.
But the EU must accept that it is also to blame for the delay.
EU dithering
First, the Commission failed to release needed guidelines in due time. Companies’ answers to their questions on how to comply were late and unclear, creating anxiety and offering an opportunity for opponents to double-down on their criticisms.
Secondly, as the Commission implicitly recognised in its statement announcing the delay, the EU has also failed to seriously work with those countries that will be most deeply affected by the law.
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For the EUDR to succeed, the EU must fundamentally change its approach, acknowledge the regulation’s impact on its trading partners and intensify efforts to support them to comply with it.
Working hand in glove with these countries must also mean working with local forest communities and civil society groups, as well as addressing the specific needs of small-scale farmers to ensure that companies don’t squeeze them out of their supply chains because of the law’s requirements.
EU member states and the European Parliament must vote against delaying this pioneering and desperately needed law – and stand firm against those hellbent on exploiting the uncertainty which now surrounds it. With wildfires raging in the drought-stricken Amazon, and in other South American countries, the stakes could not be higher.
