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30th MEETING OF THE EU DEFORESTATION PLATFORM: CEI-BOIS SUMMARY OF THE MAIN POINTS

18 Dec 2024

On 6 December 2024, CEI-Bois attended in person the 30th meeting of the EU Deforestation Platform.

On this occasion, the European Commission highlighted that a simplification of the EUDR will continue through the updating of the Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) and the Guidance document.

For this reason, all the questions that were not answered during the meeting can now be submitted to DG ENVI. CEI-Bois will proceed in this way.

Please find here reported a summary of the main updates and clarifying answers provided by the European Commission:

1-year delay of EUDR date of application

  • The European Commission’s proposal to delay the date of application of the EUDR until 30 December 2025 has been approved by the co-legislators during the trilogue negotiations of 3 December 2024.
  • The result of the trilogue negotiations has preserved the integrity of the regulation, and it will take the shape of a European Parliament’s resolution, which must now be officially adopted by the European Parliament’s plenary, before being registered in the OJEU and taking effect.
  • No other amendments tabled by the European Parliament have been adopted during the trilogue negotiations.
  • The European Commission has agreed to attach a statement to the European Parliament’s resolution, in which it commits itself to respect the deadlines pertaining to the operationalization of the Information System and to the publication of the result of the country risk benchmarking, as well as to assess the need for a further simplification of the EUDR rules as part of the June 2028 review (Article 34).

FAQ guidance and update

  • The European Commission will continue updating the Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) and Guidance document throughout 2025.
  • The first update is expected to take place immediately after the formal adoption of the 1-year delay of the EUDR’s date of application, and it will consist of the timeline update reflecting the 1-year delay.
  • While the European Commission will continue to collect industry questions and possible solutions on EUDR interpretation, substantive updates are only expected in a few months. The process is lengthy as it involves thorough internal discussions within the European Commission and with the Member States.
  • It has been confirmed that Section 3 of the Guidance will also be updated to reflect the clarification that, if wood is harvested and placed on the market for the first time before the EUDR’s date of application (before 30.12.2025, so during the transitional period), then timber products derived from this wood can be sold at any time in the future (until 31 December 2028) in compliance with the EUTR.

Geolocation information

  • The European Commission has confirmed that, when placing commodities and products on the market, which have already undergone upstream due diligence, and for which there are already DDS reference numbers, and after ensuring that their suppliers have a valid due diligence system, downstream operators can simply refer to the existing DDS reference numbers in their own DDSs, without having the obligation to collect the geolocation information through parallel “offline” channels in the scenario in which their upstream supplies have blocked the visibility of the geolocation information in the upstream DDSs.
  • The European Commission will confirm this interpretation in writing via a future FAQ update.
  • At the same time, downstream operators will nevertheless still assume liability over their placement on the market. Therefore, if they wish so, downstream operators can still request their suppliers to provide them with the geolocation information through parallel “offline” channels.

Country risk benchmarking

  • For the country risk benchmarking, data from FAO’s Global Forest Resource Assessment will be used.
  • The principles for the country risk benchmarking methodology are provided in the Annex of the Strategic Framework Communication.
  • The main goal of this methodology is to allow the assessment of the low-risk countries and regions thereof, which in turn will provide the opportunity to focus on the counties or regions thereof with a high risk.
  • The European Commission will engage with countries that will be found to be close to the thresholds.
  • Next steps: the text of the future implementing act will be discussed between the European Commission and the Member States in the EUDR Committee (so-called comitology procedure).
  • By 30 June 2025 at the latest, the European Commission will publish the implementing act with the list of countries with their assigned risk levels.

Information System

  • The European Commission did not mention any foreseen major changes to the operational aspects of the Information System, however, maintenance updates shall be expected.
  • The Information System has been officially launched on 4 December 2024.
    • The implementing regulation on the functioning of the Information System has also been adopted through the comitology procedure and published in the OJEU on 4 December 2024 as C/2024/8691.
  • The User Guide on the Information System has also officially been published in the OJEU on 13 November 2024 as C/2024/6789.
  • The API technical specifications have been updated on CIRCABC.
  • Until the EUDR’s entry into application, two servers are running in parallel: the Live Server and the Acceptance Server.
  • DDS must be submitted in the Live Server only for those commodities and products that will be placed on the market from the date of the EUDR’s entry into application (30.12.2025). These DDSs will have legal value, will satisfy EUDR obligations, and will be subject to checks by the Competent Authorities. Before submitting a DDS in the Live Server, a pre-submission pop-up will appear, reminding about the legal effects of the submission.
  • Economic operators can instead familiarize themselves with the functionalities of the Information System via the Acceptance Server. In this case, the DDSs will not have legal value, will not satisfy EUDR obligations, and will not be subject to checks by the Competent Authorities. An information banner will be visible, reminding economic operators that the Acceptance Server is only for practice.
  • By mid-January 2025, around 3000 training seats for the Information System are expected to be published.

Third-country economic operators

  • Third-country economic operators can submit their own DDS via the EUDR Information System only if they obtain an EORI number from the EU importing country.
  • If the EU-based commercial counterpart of a third-country economic operator is an EU-based trader, the latter will assume the role of operator under the EUDR, thereby also assuming the obligations of the operator.
  • In any case, both the third-country economic operator submitting the DDS via the Information System, and the EU-based counterpart are responsible for the results of their due diligence obligations.

EUDR review

  • Following the European Commission’s proposal to delay the application of the EUDR by 1 year, and the adoption of this proposal by the co-legislators, the timeline and the modalities of the ongoing multiple EUDR reviews need revisiting.
  • The objective is to publish by June 2025 the studies that will guide the reviews.