Micro and small timber businesses across Europe have just over 150 days until the EU Deforestation Regulation applies to them, the only firms of their size in any sector denied the extension to mid-2027. That is according to the European Commission, whose 13 July package confirmed the timetable and rewrote the product list for day one.
Large and medium firms comply from 30 December 2026, joined by micro and small operators, the old Timber Regulation already covered, while the smallest firms in every other sector follow on 30 June 2027.
“We have completed the simplification review and put in place the necessary measures,” Jessika Roswall, European Commissioner for Environment, Water Resilience and a Competitive Circular Economy, said on adopting the package, promising the clarity and predictability firms need to be ready by the end of 2026.
The split itself predates the package, with Regulation 2025/2650 moving the start out a year for most firms last December while holding timber’s smallest to the date the whole sector already faced. That earlier date follows the old Timber Regulation, which has bound wood traders to due diligence since 2013, the regime the EUDR now repeals and replaces, with printed products dropping out of scope under the same December amendment.
Alongside those December changes came July’s two legal acts, one redrawing the Annex I product list and one setting the rules for the Information System that will take due diligence statements, with the scope changes now before the European Parliament and the Council for scrutiny. The redraw pulls soluble coffee and certain palm-oil derivatives into scope from 30 December 2027 while letting leather and retreaded tyres out, an exclusion campaigners called deeply disappointing, with samples, second-hand goods, and waste exempt.
The core duties do not change, with operators still mapping the plot each log came from, checking it is legal and deforestation-free, and lodging a statement before the wood goes on sale or leaves the EU. Cost relief is the package’s headline claim, with the Commission’s own simplification report expecting the measures taken since 2023 to cut annual compliance costs by 75 per cent, from an estimated €8.1 billion to € 2 billion.
Older stock carries one concession for the sector, with the old rules still covering wood harvested before 29 June 2023 and sold through to 31 December 2029.
It comes as Australia’s trade agreement with Brussels, concluded in March, left beef and timber exporters fully exposed to the regulation, while Brazil cut deforestation by 80 per cent, showing the burn-scar blind spots the rules still carry.
