Stockholm (NordSIP) – As the EU’s Regulation on Deforestation Free Products (EUDR) came into effect at the end of June, and with only three months to go before the regulation starts to apply, the Brazilian government has sent a letter to its EU counterparts expressing its concern and requesting it be postponed and reconsidered.
Although the Brazilian government acknowledges that environmental challenges transcend national borders, they argue that the EUDR is misguided, misinformed, discriminatory, unilateral, coercive, and punitive.
The Deforestation Regulation
The EUDR is part of a broader plan of action to tackle deforestation and forest degradation first outlined in the 2019 Commission Communication on Stepping up EU Action to Protect and Restore the World’s Forests, a commitment later confirmed by the European Green Deal, the EU Biodiversity Strategy for 2030 and the Farm to Fork Strategy. The regulation was adopted by the EU at the end of May 2023, came into force on 29 June 2023 and is scheduled to start to apply on 30 December 2024.
The regulation hopes to bring down greenhouse gas emissions and biodiversity loss by promoting the consumption of ‘deforestation-free’ products and reducing the EU’s impact on global deforestation and forest degradation. palm oil, cattle, soy, coffee, cocoa, timber and rubber as well as derived products (such as beef, furniture, or chocolate). The regulation applies for any quantity of product, large or small.
Three principles guide the EUDR: traceability, due diligence and benchmarking. As to the traceability of the goods, operators must collect information, documents and data showing that the product is deforestation-free and legal, such as geolocation coordinates, quantity, country of production, among others. Operators must also carry out due diligence to ensure the products are free of deforestation, that they come from land that wasn’t deforested after December 31, 2020 and that they comply with the laws in the country where they were produced. Operators must also assess whether there is a risk the product does not comply with the rules, and if such a risk exists, adopt risk mitigation procedures. Moreover, the Commission will also organise a benchmarking system classifying countries or areas into three risk categories according to the risk of producing commodities there that are not deforestation-free.
The Brazilian Letter
Citing the importance of trade between the EU and Brazil, the fact that the products targeted by the legislation account for over 30% of Brazil’s exports to the EU, the government of the South American country requested that “the EU refrain from implementing the EUDR at the end of 2024 and urgently reassess its approach to the matter.”
The authors of the letter, Mauro Vieira and Carlos Henrique Baqueta Fávaro, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Minister of Agriculture and Livestock of Brazil, did not mince their words. They called the EUDR “unilateral and punitive instrument that disregards national laws on combating deforestation. It contains extraterritorial aspects that conflict with the principle of sovereignty; it discriminates between countries by affecting only those with forest resources.” The ministers also argued that the regulation “was designed without a proper understanding of the production and export processes of different products and of the realities on the ground in each country.”
The Path Ahead
Although the Brazilian ministers conclude with an olive branch of availability “to explore, bilaterally and in the appropriate regional and international fora, ways to strengthen Brazil-EU cooperation for forest preservation,” it is unlikely that the European Commission will reverse course at this advanced stage in the EUDR legislative life-cycle.
Although there were no explicit threats in the letter, the issues raised by the Brazilian government raise the possibility it might chose to bring charges before the World Trade Organisation’s (WTO) for perceived failures of the EU to comply with international trade laws. However, the effectiveness of such an escalation might be undermined by the USA’s stonewalling of WTO since the start of the Trump Administation.
