Additional guidance documents have been published today (Wednesday, October 2) by the EU Commission to “strengthen the support” for implementing the new EU deforestation law.
The EU Deforestation Regulation means that companies will only be allowed to sell products in the EU if the supplier provides a “due diligence” statement confirming that the product does not come from deforested land or has led to forest degradation after December 31, 2020.
The objective of the regulation is to minimise the EU’s contribution to global deforestation and forest degradation and to reduce the EU’s contribution to greenhouse gas emissions and global biodiversity loss.
The new regulation, which replaces the EU Timber Regulations is meant to enter into application from the end of this year.
Responding to calls from global partners, the EU Commission has proposed an extra 12 months of time to phase in the law.
If approved by the European Parliament and the council, it would make the law applicable on December 30, 2025 for large companies and June 30, 2026 for micro and small enterprises.
The EU Commission has stated that all the implementation tools are “technically ready”, and the additional 12 months would serve as a “phasing-in period” to ensure proper and effective implementation.
The commission said that it recognises concerns from global partners, which were expressed at the United Nations General Assembly this week in New York. It added that the state of preparations amongst stakeholders in Europe is uneven.
Deforestation law
The guidance documents are divided into 11 chapters covering a diverse range of issues such as legality requirements, timeframe of application, agricultural use, and clarifications on the product scope.
All of these are supported by tangible scenarios. In addition, the latest frequently asked questions section also published today by the EU Commission, features over 40 new additional answers to address questions raised by a range of stakeholders from around the world.
Since the system’s pilot testing with 100 companies conducted in January, the Commission put in place several additional measures, including:
- Creating a single point of contact for IT support for stakeholders;
- Development of an interface that allows machine-to-machine connections to the system, without the need for manual data input; more than 250 private stakeholders are developing this feature on their side;
- Support to test the geolocation files of stakeholders and providing feedback;
- Videos and detailed multilingual user instructions about the system;
- Training for interested stakeholders.
The information system where businesses will register their due diligence statements is ready to start accepting registrations in early November and for full operation in December.
Operators and traders will be able to register and submit due diligence statements even before the law’s entry into application.