AGRIFISH Ministers try to take EUDR benchmarking system hostage
11 junho 2025
Having been thus far unable to scrap the EU Deforestation Regulation (EUDR), national Agriculture ministers from EU Member States opted to empty its risk assessment methodology of meaning, and destroy the EUDR by increments. During the meeting of the Agriculture and Fisheries (AGRIFISH) Ministers, 26 May 2025, 11 Member States again attacked the world’s first deforestation due diligence law, adopted June 2023. AGRIFISH Ministers supported the proposal by Luxembourg to further simplify or delay the EUDR – or in the case of Austria, abolish it altogether – if their demands are not met.
One such demand is to introduce a new category to the recently adopted ‘benchmarking’ methodology for assessing a country’s deforestation risk: countries with negligible risk of deforestation, for which no geolocation and due diligence documents would be required.
This is problematic in many ways. To begin, legal experts deem it non-World Trade Organisation compliant: “the ‘no risk’ exemption to the EUDR results in discrimination that is arbitrary and unjustifiable”, likely violating key non-discrimination provisions of the 1994 General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade.
Next, without a due diligence statement, Competent Authorities in Member States would find it harder to check whether goods placed on the EU market stem from post-2020 deforestation or forest degradation or have violated human rights.
Despite their vociferous protests, Austria and other EU Member States will likely not be over-burdened by EUDR obligations. They should be able, for instance, to support their foresters and farmers to obtain geolocation data. Existing national systems already require farm data for Common Agricultural Policy subsidies; it should not be difficult to make these systems communicate with the EUDR’s. Moreover, certification is allowed as an auxiliary tool under EUDR due diligence procedures. In July 2024, the Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification (PEFC) adopted an EUDR Compliance model integrating geolocation. In Austria, for example, almost 85% of forests are PEFC certified.
It is still not clear why a no-risk category is needed, as the current benchmarking’s leniency has raised eyebrows internationally. It not only puts all EU Member States in the low-risk category (meaning no risk mitigation measures need be taken), it also categorises as ‘low risk’ countries that are known for circumventing EU obligations (and sanctions against Russia), such as Vietnam and China (see Earthsight article, this issue). Countries with rising deforestation, such as Brazil and Cameroon (as well as deforestation-linked human rights violations, FW 295), have been placed in the ‘standard’ risk category.
In the Ministers’ meeting, the Environment Commissioner drew attention to the substantial simplifications and concessions that have already been made to the EUDR via the April package of FAQS and Guidelines. For the EU to retain credibility with its international trading partners, it must insist on a benchmarking system that reflects the on-the-ground reality and on fair implementation of the groundbreaking law.
Image: Lu Guang/Greenpeace
Categorias: News, Forest Watch, EU Regulation on deforestation-free products
