The European Union Deforestation Regulation (EUDR) will apply to large and medium-sized operators from 30 December 2026, with most micro and small operators following on 30 June 2027. Companies selling seven commodities and derived products in the EU must show their goods were not produced on land deforested after 2020.
The law has already been postponed twice. Now pressure is building over its costs, its treatment of low-risk countries and the practical demands it places on complex international supply chains.
The clearest challenge is coming from Washington. In a LinkedIn statement, the US Mission to the EU argued that the EUDR would raise food prices by increasing the cost of soy used in animal feed.
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“The Commission should act in its EUDR review, before the clock runs out,” US Ambassador to the EU Andrew Puzder wrote, calling for compliance burdens to be removed from countries such as the United States that Washington considers to present a negligible deforestation risk.
The intervention came days after Global Witness published an analysis suggesting that the law is already producing benefits in the cocoa industry, even before companies become legally bound by its principal obligations.
That contrast is likely to define the countdown to 30 December: should the EUDR be judged primarily by the cost of documenting supply chains, or by the changes it is already encouraging in industries long associated with forest loss?