A project by the European Commission to counter deforestation and forest degradation associated with “placing on the Union market as well as exporting” certain agricultural products was unveiled in November 2021. The “Regulation on Deforestation and Forest Degradation” (RDUE) was adopted in June 2023. It was set to effect in early 2025 for large companies, and a year later for small and medium enterprises (SMEs). However, in early October 2024, the Commission proposed a one-year delay “to help global stakeholders, Member States, and third countries in their preparations.”
A few months earlier, the Commission had postponed the publication of the benchmarking analysis, which is supposed to classify countries into three risk categories (low, standard, and high). The risk level is intended to determine the level of “due diligence” importers must conduct when acquiring products that could be associated with deforestation or degradation. Operators can be penalised for not having conducted this due diligence properly, even if it turns out that the imported product did not contribute to deforestation.
The regulation stipulates that before placing a product on the European market (or exporting it), each operator must guarantee that it is not associated with land deforested after December 31, 2020, by geolocating the plots from which it originates using a traceability system. Farmers will have to upload traceability data, including GPS coordinates, which will be compared to satellite images. Indicating the boundaries of the plots is mandatory for areas of 4 hectares or more.
The products concerned include palm oil, soy, cocoa, coffee, beef, wood, natural rubber, and some derived products (chocolate, furniture, tyres, printed products, etc.). To remain compatible with WTO rules, the regulation is non-discriminatory and applies to imported and exported products (hence the absence of the term “imported”).
The entry into force of the regulation, erroneously called “imported deforestation,” is therefore likely to be delayed by one year. This decision was somewhat expected, given the outcry from major EU trading partners (Brazil, Indonesia, the United States…) and several Member States, which realized rather late that their beef, wood, and soy productions were also subject to the traceability requirements at the plot level.
Should we lament such a delay, as many NGOs and commentators do? Certainly, this is happening in a worrying context of weakening environmental measures. Nonetheless, this ambitious regulation, with undeniable objectives, is poorly designed—because it overlooks implementation issues—and is generating unprecedented diplomatic tensions. Shouldn’t this probable delay be used to try to correct some of the major flaws in the text?
First, this regulation will not halt global deforestation, or only marginally for certain sectors—such as cocoa, of which Europe remains the largest buyer—if China, India, and other major consumer countries do not adopt similar measures. According to the latest studies, only 20 to 25% of global deforestation is linked to international trade, the rest being driven by consumption within forested countries themselves. A WWF study suggests that 16% of deforestation associated with global trade can be attributed to the EU, which would represent, at most, 4% of the 6.4 million hectares of forests converted to agricultural activities in 2023. The EU’s share of global agricultural imports has been steadily declining, from 17.3% in 2000 to 12.2% in 2021, and this trend is expected to continue. It is therefore very likely that trade flows will largely shift to other markets for products rejected by the EU.
That said, Europe must “do its part” to reduce imported deforestation, while avoiding, as much as possible, direct confrontation with its trading partners, especially developing countries.
Next, two particularly contentious aspects of this regulation stand out. The EU’s definition of a forest—which adopts the FAO’s definition, including a minimum threshold of 10% tree cover—disregards local forest realities (a dense Gabonese forest is not the same as a sparse Chadian forest) and national forest definitions, and consequently, deforestation. As a result, legal productions in their countries of origin will be deemed “deforestation-driven” by the EU due to these different definitions of what constitutes a forest.
Brazil, Malaysia, and Indonesia, in particular, believe their sovereignty over land use is not being respected. For Indonesia, the RDUE constitutes a trade barrier and violates a country’s right to make sovereign decisions regarding land use. Both Indonesia and Brazil have expressed specific concerns about the criteria for categorizing countries by risk levels, which they consider “inherently discriminatory and punitive by nature.” It is worth noting that the United Kingdom, which adopted comparable legislation in 2021, and the United States, which will soon follow, have only included the legality of production as a criterion, without an overarching definition of what constitutes a forest.
Europe could consider a “graduated approach,” with tariffs—whose proceeds would be entirely allocated to support programs for small producers in the Global South—for legal productions in producing countries but deemed problematic by the EU. However, this option would require introducing tariffs—at least until “zero deforestation” guarantees are provided through certifications—on several of the agricultural products concerned (soy, cocoa, wood, rubber), tariffs that have often been reduced to zero due to bilateral or multilateral agreements.
The plot-level traceability requirement will exclude a large number of small producers from accessing the European market, especially in export sectors where they are heavily represented. In September 2023, 17 ambassadors from Southern countries wrote to European authorities contesting “an undifferentiated approach” that would primarily affect “smallholders, who are particularly vulnerable to the RDUE.” A 2023 study reported that 50 to 60% of the cocoa produced in Côte d’Ivoire was sold by “trackers,” often informal intermediaries, who are very difficult to integrate into a traceability system. Moreover, producer lists are not stable: among the planters registered by Ivorian authorities and those registered by cocoa companies, the correspondence rate was only 6%.
Yet, a relaxation of this traceability requirement is conceivable. It could involve not only parcel-level traceability but also “zero deforestation” territories, emerging from a project and a collective effort by local actors (businesses, small producers, authorities and local communities, NGOs…), which would be independently verified and certified. Of course, territorial traceability would offer less assurance than individual traceability, but it would provide a more favourable outlook for small producers and would likely ease some opposition to the current version of the RDUE.
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