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EU Commission wants to postpone deforestation law

by AI | 03.Oct 2024 | Europe in brief AI

For products like cocoa, coffee, or soy, stricter rules for protecting rainforests should apply in the EU in the future. Now the EU Commission is postponing the implementation.

September 7, 2021, Brazil, Porto Velho: The aerial photograph shows a burned and deforested area in the Amazon region. Photo: Fernando Souza/Zuma Press/dpa

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Brussels – After months of criticism of an EU law to protect the rainforest, the EU Commission wants to postpone the project by one year. Due to feedback on the state of preparations, a further twelve-month period should be granted to those involved. If the EU Parliament and the member states approve the proposal, the law would come into force on December 30, 2025 for large companies and on June 30, 2026 for micro and small businesses, the EU Commission announced.

Law to protect the rainforest

According to the regulation, products such as coffee, wood, soy, cocoa, and palm oil may only be sold in the EU if no forests have been cleared for this purpose after 2020. This is also intended to significantly reduce deforestation of the rainforest, for example in the South American Amazon region.

Specifically, companies will have to declare in the future that no forest was cleared or damaged for their product after December 31, 2020. Anyone who does not adhere to the regulations must expect heavy fines of at least four percent of their annual EU sales.

Many demanded postponement

The project has been criticized from within the economy and across party lines. Accordingly, many reacted positively to the announcement. German CSU politician and chairman of the center-right alliance EPP group in the European Parliament, Manfred Weber, sees the postponement as a success for his party. A bureaucratic monster had been prevented.

However, the German Green Party and the liberal FDP also spoke out against the project in its planned form. Federal Minister of Agriculture Cem Özdemir (Greens) has been expressing criticism for months and called for more time for implementation. He welcomed the proposal now submitted by the EU Commission and stated: “We will thoroughly examine whether these proposals are also practically feasible.” The deputy FDP parliamentary group leader in the Bundestag, Carina Konrad, had repeatedly expressed concerns.

Many companies share a similar view. Forest owners, farmers, and companies such as auto suppliers would be affected, would have to comply with new reporting requirements, and view the regulation critically.

Criticism from the EU Parliament

Unlike her party colleague Özdemir, the MEP Anna Cavazzini evaluates the project differently. She described the planned postponement as a tragedy, which is happening in the context of the greatest forest destruction of recent years on the Latin American continent. This is a frontal attack on EU climate policy. The SPD MEP Delara Burkhardt said that hardly had EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen started her second term than she was undermining environmental policy. Social Democrats would do everything to ensure that conservatives around CDU and CSU did not exploit the process to weaken the law.

Environmental organizations also expressed vehement criticism. The WWF stated that deforestation was the second-largest CO2 source after the industry. “Ursula von der Leyen might as well have swung the chainsaw herself,” said Sébastian Risso from Greenpeace. People in Europe would not want products from deforestation on their supermarket shelves, but that is exactly what the delay would bring them. (October 2)

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