But amendments proposed by the EPP and passed by the European Parliament have been abandoned, after they met with strong resistance from the Commission and EU member countries.
These amendments include a proposal to create a new “no risk” category that would reduce due diligence requirements for commodities sourced from areas at zero or negligible risk of deforestation. The Council of the EU had raised concerns about the compatibility of such a measure with World Trade Organization rules, and which POLITICO reported the EPP had finally dropped late last week.
That backtrack was not the first in the saga. Back in November, the EPP abandoned a number of more radical proposed reforms to the law, ahead of a vote in Parliament. These included a two-year delay, and a suite of carve-outs that critics argued would have substantially weakened the law’s intended purpose of ensuring products sold within the EU do not contribute to global deforestation.
Still, in a concession to the EPP, the Commission on Tuesday agreed to look into how to simplify the regulation and reduce regulatory burden when the law is reviewed in 2028.
“The Commission will provide further clarifications and explore additional simplifications, and streamline reporting and document obligations, to keep them to a necessary minimum,” the agreed statement read.
The text will now go through a final vote in the Parliament’s environment committee and in plenary before it’s published in the EU Official Journal, and becomes law.
