A “No Risk” EUDR pathway will provide a green lane for Russia and Belarus birch ply to circumvent wartime sanctions and continue flooding European supply chains. That is according to Earthsight, which today spoke to Euronews about the push by the majority of member states to water down the European Union’s signature deforestation regulation.
“The way the current proposal is worded, it would strip away a key part of the law, the requirement for geolocation in certain countries, according to Tara Ganesh, lead timber expert for Earthsight, who said geolocation is a very powerful tool that can be used to debunk fake harvest and false origin claims. “For so-called ‘no-risk’ countries, they would be exempt from geolocation requirements, and there would also be no obligation for authorities to carry out a minimum number of checks on those countries.”
Under the draft reform, member states want to introduce a new ‘no risk’ category with lighter rules, which Ganesh claims would be open to abuse by those seeking to circumvent sanctions by importing timber from Russia and Belarus: “Several NGOs around the world have shown that wood, not just from Russia, but also from other high-risk tropical countries and deforestation hotspots, is regularly laundered through countries like China. Essentially, what we are calling for is for the European Commission to firmly reject the zero-risk proposal from the outset and to implement the law as it stands by the end of this year,” Ganesh said.
EU countries are gaining more from the illegal imports.
As it stands, more than 20 lorry loads of Russian and Belarusian birch ply—or about 700 cubic metres – arrive at European ports every day, with more than 2/3rds of this illegal timber coming from a group of eight countries that are pushing for the ammendmeents: “Incidentally, many of the member states calling for [simplifying the legislation] are also among those receiving some of the highest volumes of conflict plywood we have been documenting. In particular, eight of the top ten EU importers of conflict plywood, according to the most recent data, are among the member states pushing for the reform,” Ganesh told Euronews.
Russia is amongst the largest producers of wood worldwide, and its birch plywood is used for a range of purposes, including furniture. Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the EU imposed sanctions on wood products from Russia and Belarus. In January Earthsight published the results of an undercover investigation, which claimed that the EU systematically imported more than €1.5 billion of illegal Russian and Belarusian birch plywood since sanctions came into effect in July 2022 – with new report, published earlier this month, showing that €273 million worth of illegal plywood entered the EU from November 2024 to April 2025.
“We saw that as soon as the sanctions took effect, the flow of timber from Russia stopped or declined drastically, and at the same time, imports from third countries rose,” Ganesh said, earmarking China, Georgia, Kazakhstan and Turkey as among countries from which exports had increased significantly over that time. They can get fake certificates, even from big labelling companies, the investigation claims.
“Our report was all about showing how companies in these third countries are simply sticking new labels and new packaging on Russian-manufactured goods, then sending them to the EU with documents originating from those third countries. For the EU importer, they are able to safely claim that the products are manufactured, for instance, in China.”
Euronews contacted the European Commission for comment on the investigation and its reactions: “Commission services have been in close contact with Earthsight and national authorities regarding the findings of the mentioned report, which have also been presented and discussed during a recent meeting of the Commission’s Expert Group on Protecting and Restoring the World’s Forests,” a spokesperson said.
“The Commission has classified Russia and Belarus as ‘high risk’ countries under the EU Deforestation Regulation (EDUR). This means that imports from Russia and Belarus will be subject to increased standards of scrutiny to prevent unlawful imports. More broadly, the Commission continues to work on supporting an effective and efficient implementation of EUDR,” the spokesperson added. So far, countries seeking the simplification of the Deforestation Regulation are Austria, Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Finland, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia and Sweden.
Country risk classifications will not stop ‘high-risk’ timber from infiltrating Europe.
Last month, Wood Central spoke to Marigold Walkins and Kerstin Canby, from Forest Trends, who said the country risk classification system – which underpins the EUDR – does not pass the pub test: “I think that the benchmarking results reflect the concerns within the EU Member States around enforcement,” said Walkins, a senior advisor at Forest Trends. “The whole point of the country benchmarking is to set the enforcement parameters – the percentage checks – and I think it has been created with that in mind. We know there has been pushback in the EU on the scale of checks and the resources required to fulfil them. (And) I think this might be a way of reducing some of the burden on those competent authorities.”
Both Walkins and Canby are concerned that labelling and source of origin information ‘may disappear’ when timber is exported into major timber hubs (for example China), manufactured and then re-exported into Europe: “Presumably, declarations would still need to indicate the original country of harvest,” Canby said. “But if the country of harvest is categorised as standard risk and the re-exporting country (e.g. China) is listed as low risk, how would that be treated? We already know from years of experience that much of the labelling and origin information tends to “disappear” during processing and re-export, which raises significant concerns,” she said.
- To learn more about the EUDR’s country classification scheme, click here for Wood Central’s special feature. And to understand why transhipment can muddy the waters on compliance and enforcement, click here for more information.
