The European Commission is providing further simplifications and reducing the administrative burden to facilitate the implementation of the EU Deforestation Regulation (EUDR). In this context, it published on April 15, 2025, new guidance documents in view of the Regulation's entry into application at the end of 2025 for Member States, operators, and traders.
The EU Deforestation Regulation (EUDR) aims to ensure that key goods in the EU market do not contribute to deforestation and forest degradation both in the EU and globally, and has already – according to the Commission – led to positive developments and action on the ground to fight deforestation, climate change, and biodiversity loss.
With the announced simplifications, the Commission says that it is “delivering on its commitment to the European Parliament and the Council, while guaranteeing regulatory certainty within the boundaries of the Regulation.”
Furthermore, with these clarifications and simplifications, the Commission is also replying to feedback from its international partners.
Public consultation on the Delegated Act
The updated guidance documents and Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) will provide companies, EU Member States’ authorities, and partner countries with additional simplified measures and clarifications on how to demonstrate that their products are deforestation-free.
According to the Commission, both documents reflect the “input from Member States, partner countries, businesses, and industry. This will also guarantee harmonised implementation of the law across the EU.”
The simplifications introduced will be further complemented by a Delegated Act, also published on April 15, 2025, for public consultation.
The Act provides further clarifications and simplifications on the scope of EUDR, addressing stakeholders’ requests for guidance on specific categories of products. This will also avoid unnecessary administrative costs for economic operators and authorities.
Finally, the Commission is currently finalising the country benchmarking system through an Implementing Act. It will be adopted no later than June 30, 2025, following discussions with Member States.
Together, all these measures will lead to a currently estimated 30 percent reduction of administrative costs and burden for companies. This will ensure a simple, fair, and cost-efficient implementation of this key piece of legislation.
We are committed to implementing EU rules on deforestation in a spirit of close partnership, transparency, and open dialogue. Our aim is to reduce the administrative burden for companies while preserving the goals of the regulation. We will continue to work very closely with all stakeholders to ensure that our rules deliver on reducing global deforestation and forest degradation in the least burdensome way for companies, said Jessika Roswall, Commissioner for Environment, Water Resilience, and a Competitive Circular Economy.
Key simplification measures
With the new guidance documents, the Commission has introduced several simplification measures, for example:
- Large companies can reuse existing due diligence statements when goods previously on the EU market are reimported. This means that less information needs to be submitted in the IT system;
- An authorised representative can now submit a due diligence statement on behalf of members of company groups;
- Companies will be allowed to submit due diligence statements annually instead of for every shipment or batch placed on the EU market;
- Clarification of ‘ascertaining’ that due diligence has been carried out, so that large companies downstream benefit from simplified obligations (a minimal legal obligation of collecting reference numbers of Due Diligence Statement (DDS) from their suppliers and using those references for their own DDS submissions now applies).
All the updated measures are expected to significantly reduce the number of due diligence statements that companies need to file, in response to key industry demands. The goal of these simplifications for due diligence statements is to ensure easy and efficient data entry for all users.
The Commission has strengthened dialogue with third countries, businesses, civil society, and global partners to facilitate implementation and support preparation through dedicated meetings and online trainings since 2024 in line with its Strategic Framework for Cooperation and Engagement.
The Commission says that it will continue responding to feedback from stakeholders, EU Member States, and partner countries to “assist traders and operators with implementation on the ground and provide further guidance, as necessary.”
Over 300 dedicated meetings on the EUDR with stakeholders, including global partners, were held in 2024 to facilitate implementation.
The EUDR Information System opened on December 4, 2024, and is available in all EU languages. Operators can already submit and manage their Due Diligence Statements. In addition, the submission and management of due diligence statements are facilitated by the Application Programming Interface (API) introduced in the Information System.
To support preparation, the Commission has already offered over 50 webinars with 15,500 places for online training on the use of the EUDR Information System open to all interested stakeholders, supported by online videos in multiple languages and a training system for familiarisation.
The Commission has also scaled up support to global partners under its Team Europe Initiative on Deforestation-free Value chains (EUR 86 million) to support partner countries transitioning to sustainable, deforestation-free, and legal value chains.
