The EU is responsible for 16% of global deforestation through its imports, according to WWF.
Deforestation fires in Manaquiri, Brazil, September 6, 2023. (AFP / MICHAEL DANTAS)
US timber producers are unable to comply with future European anti-deforestation legislation and Washington has asked the EU to delay its effective application, Brussels said on Thursday (June 20th).
This pressure is added
serious concerns from South American and African countries
but also from several EU member states who are alarmed by the administrative burden on their own farmers, growers and foresters.
This legislation, which was finalized at the end of 2022, prohibits from the end of 2024 the marketing in the EU of a number of products (
cocoa, coffee, soy, palm oil, wood, beef, rubber, leather, furniture, paper…
) if they come from deforested countries after December 2020. In particular, importing companies responsible for their supply chain must
prove traceability via geolocation data provided by farmers
and associated with satellite imagery.
According to information from
Financial Times
the US Secretaries of Commerce, Gina Raimondo, and Agriculture, Thomas Vilsack, as well as US Trade Representative Katherine Tai, sent a letter to the European Commission at the end of May to request a
delay in implementing regulation due to ‘critical challenges’ for US manufacturers
until these “substantial issues” have been resolved.
“Bureaucratic Obstacles”
“We can confirm receipt of the letter and as always we will respond to you in due course,” said
AFP
a spokesperson for the Commission. “We are actively working closely with all stakeholders to prepare for its application. The Commission is constantly monitoring the situation and working hard to ensure that all conditions are met for a smooth implementation,” he added.
The European Commissioner for the Environment, Virginijus Sinkevicius, visited
Paraguay
in
Bolivia
and in
Ecuador
to try to allay these countries’ fears and criticism of the feared impact on their exports to the EU and on the technical and financial difficulties for small growers. In April he also visited
Ivory Coast
the world’s leading cocoa producer.
Within the EU itself, almost twenty ministers of agriculture from the member states,
Austria
And
Finland
at the helm, lamented at the beginning of April “new bureaucratic obstacles” for the agricultural world with the risk of paralyzing investment or “creating distortions of competition”.
The legislation stipulates that controls target at least 9% of products coming from countries deemed to be at “high risk” of deforestation, while those from “low risk” countries benefit from reduced controls and simplified procedures. However, in the absence of an already established classification, the European Commission plans to consider all countries as “default risk” at the end of December.
The EU is responsible for 16% of global deforestation through its imports, according to WWF.
