Statement on the EUDR agreement between Parliament and Council

EuroCommerce – the association representing retailers and wholesalers in Europe – welcomes the agreement reached yesterday by the co-legislators on the EU regulation for deforestation-free products (EUDR).

We thank the negotiating parties for their efforts to improve the regulation to ensure smooth implementation by agreeing on the much-needed additional transition period. This responds to our earlier call for more time to consolidate and build on the considerable efforts made by our sector in support of the important objective of halting deforestation.

This additional time helps to address remaining uncertainties regarding the implementation of the rules and allows suppliers in our supply chain to prepare better. We also want to underline that a fully functioning information system and the application programming interface must be in place before the application can kick off. We will continue to work with the Commission to propose options for optimal implementation.