European Parliament Votes to Postpone Deforestation Regulation to 2025 and Proposes Additional Amendments

On 14 November 2024, the European Parliament (Parliament) voted in favour of the European Commission’s (Commission) to postpone the implementation of the European Deforestation Regulation (EUDR) by one year, allowing companies additional time to comply with the law. The Parliament also proposed additional amendments to the EUDR.

Background and Revised Timeline

The EUDR is designed to ensure that products sold within the EU are not sourced from deforested land, as a measure in combating climate change and biodiversity loss. To this end, the EUDR imposes supply chain due diligence requirements on operators (broadly covering EU manufacturers and importers and exporters from the EU) and traders of products linked to deforestation and forest degradation. For more information and background to the EUDR, see this Latham blog post.

The requirements of the EUDR were initially set to start applying from 30 December 2024. On 2 October 2024, the Commission proposed to postpone the EUDR’s application by one year, pushing the effective date to 30 December 2025 for most operators and traders. For micro and small undertakings, the new effective date would be 30 June 2026. For more information on the Commission’s proposal, see this Latham article.

The proposal to delay the application date came in response to concerns from EU Member States, non-EU countries, traders, and operators, who indicated that they would struggle to fully comply with the rules by the original deadline. The European Council agreed on a position to support the one-year delay on 16 October 2024.

The Parliament’s vote on the delay passed with 371 votes in favour, 240 against, and 30 abstentions.

Proposed Amendments

In addition to the postponement, the Parliament approved certain amendments proposed by political groups.

The most significant proposed amendment that the Parliament approved is the introduction of a new category of countries deemed to pose “no risk” of deforestation in the EUDR country benchmarking system. This category would supplement the existing categories of “low”, “standard”, and “high” risk. Considerably less stringent due diligence requirements would apply in relation to countries classified as “no risk”, focussed mainly on compliance with legislation of the country of production. The Commission is tasked with finalising the country benchmarking system by 30 June 2025.

Other tabled amendment proposals (i) to exclude traders from the scope of the EUDR; and (ii) to delay the application of the EUDR by two years instead of one, were withdrawn before the Parliament’s vote.

Next Steps

The EUDR amendment proposal will now be referred back for interinstitutional negotiations among the Parliament, the Council, and the Commission. For the changes and the delay to take effect, the agreed text must be endorsed by both the Council and Parliament and subsequently published in the EU Official Journal.

Latham & Watkins will continue to monitor developments in relation to the EUDR and the European Green Deal.

This post was prepared with the assistance of Toon Dictus.