Page Contents
Related areas
Key contacts
With the European Commission (the Commission) proposing another one-year delay to the commencement of the Regulation on Deforestation-free Products (the Regulation), one might be forgiven for being pessimistic about the future of the law (at least in its current form). It was around this time last year that the Commission proposed the first one-year delay to the Regulation, which was then fast-tracked through the legislative process.
Commission spokesman, Olof Gill, told a press conference in Brussels that the Commission has concluded that it cannot meet the current commencement date (30 December 2025) due to "serious capacity concerns regarding the IT system" designed to support implementation of the Regulation. This message was confirmed by Jessika Roswall, European Commissioner for the Environment, Water Resilience and a Competitive Circular Economy.
The Regulation: a brief reminder
The Regulation prohibits placing on the EU market certain products containing or made with “relevant commodities” that are associated with deforestation and forest degradation. These commodities are cattle, cocoa, coffee, oil palm, rubber, soya and wood. Before they may supply and sell these products on the EU market or export them from the EU, businesses will be required to perform due diligence on the origins of in-scope products and verify that they are deforestation-free. The Regulation provides for the ranking of countries as low, standard or high risk in terms of deforestation and this risk rating determines the level of due diligence required. No country is immune from the Regulation – even those designated as low risk have some due diligence obligations, albeit reduced ones.
Bowing to pressure?
For opponents of the legislation – which includes industries such as farming and forestry, as well as certain political groups and third countries – the delay presents another opportunity to revise what they consider to be an unworkable law. While Commissioner Roswall denied that the delay is linked to complaints from trade partners and industry, the Regulation has come up during trade negotiations between the US and the EU.
In the August 2025 Joint Statement announcing the framework on a US-EU trade agreement, the EU recognises that production of the Regulation’s relevant commodities within the US “poses negligible risk to global deforestation” and “commits to work to address the concerns of US producers and exporters … with a view to avoiding undue impact on US-EU trade”. The US is currently classed as low risk under the Regulation, but US lobbying groups are pushing for a new zero/negligible risk category, which would exempt US businesses entirely. The Regulation in its current form does not provide a mechanism for zero-risk designation.
The announcement of the delay also came in the same week that the Commission finalised trade negotiations with Indonesia, the world’s top exporter of palm oil, and a vocal opponent of the Regulation. This new trade agreement also includes a protocol on palm oil.
Division in the institutions
Within the European Parliament (the Parliament), the European People’s Party (EPP) has welcomed the delay. “The goal of stopping global deforestation is and remains the right one, but a bureaucratic monster weakens the acceptance of European environmental policy,” says Peter Liese MEP, the EPP Group’s Spokesman on Environment. The EPP will be pushing, once again, for amendments to the Regulation, including:
MEPs from the Socialists and Democrats, Renew and Green political groups have denounced the Commission’s proposal as a concession to lobbies, describing it, variously, as “deplorable” and an undermining of “Europe’s credibility and position as a role model”. They have vowed to resist attempts to amend the Regulation.
There is also division among Member States in the Council of the EU (the Council), although the contingent against the Regulation has grown in recent months. A position paper entitled Simplification of the EU Deforestation Regulation (EUDR): difficulties in implementing the EUDR and the need for substantial simplification was submitted by Luxembourg and Austria for discussion at a meeting of the Agriculture and Fisheries Council in May 2025. The paper was supported by Bulgaria, Croatia, Czechia, Finland, Italy, Latvia, Portugal, Romania and Slovenia. The paper calls for postponement of the Regulation until simplification is achieved, arguing that the requirements imposed on farmers and foresters by the Regulation may be impossible to implement and are disproportionate to the objective of the Regulation.
This was followed up in July by a joint letter, sent to the Commission by the agriculture ministers of 18 Member States, including Ireland. In the letter, the ministers state that the Regulation in its current form “does not sufficiently take into account countries with effective forest protection laws and a negligible risk of deforestation” and “imposes disproportionate bureaucratic obligations on countries, where deforestation is demonstrably insignificant”.
What happens next?
The Commission must now draft a formal proposal for an amending regulation, which must be approved by both the Parliament and the Council. With the Regulation’s commencement date looming, the Commission is likely to request the fast-track legislative procedure (as it did last year) and to confine this amendment to the postponement of the Regulation. Other initiatives to further modify the Regulation may follow in the months to come.
For further information on this topic, please contact Jill Shaw, Anne O’Neill or any member of ALG’s ESG & Sustainability group.
Date published: 7 October 2025
