The EUDR – Europe’s signature deforestation regulation – is facing crisis after the European Parliament voted to reject the benchmarking system, which categorised more than 190 different countries based on their risk of deforestation.
It comes after a motion led by Alexander Bernhuber of the European People’s Party (EPP) and supported by the majority of MEP’s argued that the system suffered from a series of flaws, including the use of outdated data that “does not accurately reflect the current realities in the countries concerned,” and “fails to consider key real-world factors, most notably current land-use dynamics and forest degradation,” resulting in countries being placed in higher risk categories.
Wood Central understands that the motion also stated that the EUDR’s inclusion of only three risk categories – low, standard, and high risk – was “insufficient to adequately differentiate between countries with vastly different levels of deforestation risk.” It follows the EPP’s success last year in integrating a new “no-risk” category into Parliament’s negotiating position on the EUDR, although the category did not make it into the agreement between Parliament and the European Council.
That agreement, however, delayed the implementation of the law by a year, with the EUDR now becoming applicable for large companies in December 2025 and for micro- and small enterprises in June 2026. The Commission had proposed the delay, noting that “several global partners have repeatedly expressed concerns about their state of preparedness,” and adding that even within the EU, “the state of preparations amongst stakeholders in Europe is also uneven.”
WWF slams the European Parliament over EUDR circus
The latest setback has been met with criticism from ENGOs, including the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), which claims that the vote “represents an irresponsible move against one of the EU’s flagship environmental laws,” with the inclusion of a “insignificant or negligible risk (category) – absent from the legal text of the EUDR…causing more burden for companies that have already set up systems, and undermine the legal certainty that businesses urgently need.”
According to Anke Schulmeister-Oldenhove, Manager of Forests at WWF European Policy Office, the “Parliament seems to be blind to the ongoing climate crisis, putting the EUDR’s credibility and the EU’s climate leadership at risk, and sending the wrong signal at the worst possible time as global deforestation rates spiral out of control. The European Commission must now stay the course and implement the EUDR, not be distracted by this political posturing.”
- To learn more about the country benchmarking system, click here to read Wood Central’s exclusive interview with Marigold Walkins and Kerstin Canby from Forest Trends last month.
