According to news reports, the EU Commission proposed delaying the European Union's Deforestation Regulation (EUDR) for a second time. The EUDR was already delayed by one year at the end of 2024 and is supposed to become effective by the end of 2025.
An additional delay to the EUDR will require the approval of a majority of EU Member States and the European Parliament.
The EU Commission justified the proposal with concerns that its IT system on which covered companies rely for their compliance with the EUDR may not be able to deal with the expected data traffic. There has also been speculation that the proposal to delay the EUDR is part of the political agreement reached between the EU Commission and Indonesia on a trade deal that was announced on the same day when the Commission proposed delaying the EUDR. Some have also argued that the Commission's proposal is the result of continuing U.S. pressure on the EU because of non-tariff barriers to trade.
The German secretary for agriculture welcomed the Commission's proposal and stated that Germany will push for a further amendment to the EUDR that would create a "zero-risk" category. A number of EU Member States have been asking for such additional change for quite some time.
Even assuming that the European Parliament agrees to delay the EUDR, taking all procedural steps required for changing this regulation before the end of this year will not be an easy task. The European institutions have already been criticized for violating their own rules for law-making in the context of the changes to the CSRD, CS3D and Taxonomy Regulation in the context of the Omnibus proposal.
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