🚨 EU may postpone the EUDR once again

In late September, the European Commission announced a possible postponement of the EU Regulation on Deforestation-free Products (EUDR) by another year. If implemented, this would mark the second delay of the landmark law adopted in 2023 as a historic step for protecting the world's forests.

The urgency of forest protection has never been more apparent. Data from the University of Maryland's GLAD laboratory, accessible through the World Resources Institute's Global Forest Watch platform, reveals that tropical primary forests disappeared at an alarming rate of 18 soccer fields every minute throughout 2024 — representing approximately twice the destruction rate observed in 2023. In 2024, forest clearing for permanent agriculture, combined with wildfires (caused primarily by humans with the same aims), resulted in the loss of a record 6.7 million hectares of primary rainforest. Primary forest loss, driven mostly by the conversion of forests to agriculture, increased by 14% between 2023 and 2024.

This global crisis particularly affects regions like Ukraine, which faces a dual threat to its forests: devastating war-related destruction and intensifying commercial pressure on remaining forests, including expert-identified primeval.

The Commission's proposed justification centers on "technical failures," specifically citing concerns about the IT system's capacity and readiness to handle the projected volume of interactions from economic operators. However, environmental organizations warn that delaying EUDR implementation opens the door for continued irreversible forest destruction for a second consecutive year. Another year of postponement will lead to the complete deforestation and degradation of millions more hectares of forests worldwide. How much more?

“This is part of a wider battle: between those who want to protect the natural world and the life systems which depend on it, and those intent on destroying it, often driven by narrow self-interest,” stressed Fern expert Nicole Polsterer.

Civil society organizations are calling on the EU not to betray its own commitments under the "European Green Deal" and not to allow bureaucratic obstacles to undermine the world's first law of such scale. 

"Ukraine, for its part, is largely prepared to implement the Regulation into national legislation and observes with hope the lobbying processes in the EU," says Dmytro Karabchuk, ForestCom EUTR and EUDR expert.