The European Commission (EC) has blamed excessive strain on its own IT system, which is needed to declare compliance with the bloc's new deforestation law. This is also the reason why, for the second year running, the EC is postponing implementation of the Deforestation Regulation.
On Tuesday 23 September, in a letter to European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, European Union Environment Commissioner Jessika Roswall asked for a further one-year postponement of the introduction of the European Union Deforestation Regulation (EUDR). The Commission will propose creating a new "no risk" category as part of the benchmarking system that determines compliance. That decision would in effect exempt many countries entirely from the application of the Deforestation Regulation.
The new IT system, which EC officials call an "internal corporate system", is currently used in around 20 other EU policy areas; it must be used by importers and prospective buyers of products such as cocoa, coffee beans, meat and timber to declare that those products are not linked to deforestation.
"It has become clear that demand considerably exceeds our forecasts," a senior Commission official told journalists, noting that: "This creates a risk to the operation of the system, which is why we have concluded that we need to assess how to manage those risks."
Commission officials said that the initial estimates of the volume of information to be submitted had been more modest. It was calculated that around 100 million so-called Due Diligence Statements (DDS) would be submitted each year. The new assessment indicates that the number of DDS will be ten times higher, because the number of registered operators runs into the hundreds of thousands. Asked why the IT overload issues have only come to light now, the official explained that the IT system was introduced about a year ago and that "we did not have a clear picture of the load the IT system would face".
The delay is a blow to the European Commission's credibility
Last year too, the Commission requested a one-year postponement of the Deforestation Regulation, seeking to soften the regulation's scope to ensure that it applies only to international importers and buyers.
The EUDR was drawn up to require sellers of coffee, chocolate, palm oil, beef and timber to prove that their goods are traceable to land that has not been deforested since 31 December 2020. The proposal was adopted by a large majority in the European Parliament and among the governments of EU member states. Each country's compliance burden is based on a benchmarking system published by the Commission in May this year. The system assigns countries to "high", "standard" or "low risk" categories.
The appetite among European national governments and the centre-right political groups in the European Parliament for softening the directive has not gone away
In July, 18 European Union countries signed a letter to the Commission, calling on it to begin a "simplification" process for the Deforestation Regulation and to postpone its implementation. This second delay may fuel speculation that the law will ultimately not be adopted at all. If member states or Members of the European Parliament were to attempt to repeal the regulation altogether, the Commission would have the option of simply withdrawing it.
"It is almost unbelievable that European governments and businesses have once again missed the opportunity and are not ready to comply with a law that was adopted in 2023 by a convincing majority," lamented Nicole Polsterer of the environmental campaign NGO Fern. (This organisation has from time to time stood out for its rather radical and one-sided approach – editor's note) "Today's decision is an insult to everyone who has worked hard to put a traceability system in place and taken steps to ensure that smallholder farmers can comply with the regulation," said N. Polsterer.