Europe has doubled down on huge volumes of Russian and Belarusian birch crossing European borders, classifying all products entering the EU as “high risk” under its new EUDR country classification system.
As revealed by Wood Central yesterday, the new system defines the number of compliance checks authorities must make for all cattle, cocoa, coffee, oil palm, rubber, soya, and wood that enters the EU—with 1% of all imports checked from “low risk” countries, 3% from “standard risk” countries, and 9% from “high risk” countries like Russia, Belarus, North Korea, and Myanmar.
“The European Commission has published an updated list of countries classified according to risk level in accordance with the EUDR,” according to Viktor Smal, head of the State Forestry Agency of Ukraine. “Ukraine, like leading European timber producers, has been given low-risk status.”
As a low-risk country, Smal said Ukraine now has new opportunities to drive furniture imports into European markets with Zelenskyy authorities now working with the EU to ensure that “gray import schemes for Russian timber” are not excluded in the list of high-risk suppliers.
“This (low-risk classification) is the result of our systematic reforms and digital transformation in the forestry sector, in particular the introduction of such tools as e-logging tickets, e-certificates of origin, and e-TTN with photo documentation,” Smal said, with timber furniture exports an increasingly important lifeline for Ukrainian businesses ravaged more than three and a half years since the start of the Russian and Ukrainian war.
The new classification comes after Wood Central revealed that more than €1.5 billion worth of Russian timber has been smuggled into the European Union since June 2022, with all 27 states implicated in a ‘blood trade’ that has led to 500,000 cubic metres entering Europe and making a mockery of war sanctions. That is, according to a new report published by UK-based ENGO Earthsight, revealing that more than 20 lorry loads of birch ply—or about 700 cubic metres—are flooding ports via friendly third-party actors (including China, Turkey, Kazakhstan, and Georgia—all low-risk countries under the new classification system).
At the same time, a report produced by World Forest ID experts found that nearly half of all sampled birch products—used in furniture, kitchen panels, and musical instruments—certified by FSC or PEFC have been misidentified and do not come from the correct country of origin, raising fears that huge shipments of Russian and Belarusian wood are still being smuggled into the global markets, including the United Kingdom.
- To learn more about the new EUDR rules, which could reduce compliance costs by as much as 30%, click here for Wood Central’s story from earlier this month.
