A truck carrying recently logged timber in Siberia, Russia. September 2020.
In August and September 2025, the European Commission launched a call for evidence on simplification of administrative burdens in environmental legislation. Earthsight lodged the below submission arguing why the EU Deforestation Regulation should be excluded from any proposed omnibus.
Submission to call for evidence on simplification of administrative burdens in environmental legislation
Earthsight is a UK-based non-profit organisation which uses in-depth investigations to expose the links between global supply chains and environmental and social crime. We have published numerous reports highlighting the role of EU demand in driving global deforestation and have monitored the implementation of the European Timber Regulation (EUTR) since our inception.
Earthsight submits the feedback below to the European Commission’s call for evidence on its initiative to simplify and streamline administrative requirements related to the environment in the areas of waste products and industrial emissions.
Environmental standards must not be rolled back under the guise of ‘simplification’
The Commission’s proposal to ‘simplify’ environmental legislation through an omnibus risks weakening crucial laws designed to protect forests, safeguard biodiversity and address climate change. It marks a 180-degree turn from its previous mandate, putting the European Green Deal at risk of being hollowed out.
This is not the Commission’s first omnibus proposal. An earlier one triggered by industry lobbying has ballooned into over 1000 proposed amendments. What began as an already problematic proposal quickly span out of control, effectively rolling out a welcome mat for corporations seeking to maximise profits at the expense of people and the planet.
‘Simplification’ cannot justify bulldozing hard-won environmental and human rights protections. Rolling back these safeguards would be regression, with the EU yielding to political and industry pressure instead of defending the interests of its citizens and the environment.
The EU Deforestation Regulation (EUDR) must not be included in the proposed omnibus
The EUDR is essential to tackling global deforestation
The world saw a record-shattering 6.7 million hectares of tropical rainforest destroyed in 2024, an area more than twice the size of Belgium. A recent assessment showed that we have “barely made a dent in curbing deforestation” this decade. The EUDR aims to prevent European consumption from fuelling this destruction, by banning the import or sale of certain goods – timber, rubber, coffee, cocoa, soy, palm oil, beef and leather – if they have been produced illegally or on recently deforested land. This law is urgently needed to address global deforestation and should not be included in the environmental omnibus proposal.
Earthsight’s investigations have highlighted why the EUDR is needed. Our research has exposed how leather supply chains are linked to illegal cattle ranching in the Amazon rainforest; linked European soy supply chains to illegal deforestation, land grabbing, corruption, and violence against traditional communities in the Brazilian Cerrado; and traced illegal or suspect timber coming into Europe from Russia, Belarus and Brazil. The EUDR is an essential tool to prevent European consumption from fuelling land grabbing, human rights abuses, illegal logging and deforestation overseas.
The Commission has already introduced measures to the EUDR to help reduce administrative burdens and facilitate the implementation of the Regulation. Further measures to streamline reporting or clarify the law’s application can be made after implementation. Including the EUDR in the environmental omnibus proposal would allow every provision of the law to be reopened and every issue debated. The omnibus process could take months, if not years, leading to additional legal uncertainty for businesses – the opposite of simplification.
Burdens of the EUDR on businesses have been exaggerated
Discussions about the administrative burden of EUDR compliance give an exaggerated impression of the costs to business.
Earthsight’s analysis shows that a handful of very large multinationals dominate imports of EUDR-liable commodities. For example, the ten largest importers account for 83 per cent of cocoa imports from Cote D’Ivoire to the EU, 78 per cent of palm oil imports from Indonesia and 64 per cent of soy imports from Brazil. These companies are well-resourced, long aware of the law and many have been developing traceability systems for years as part of voluntary zero-deforestation commitments made well before the EUDR was agreed.
In the case of timber, the industry has already been operating with traceability systems for over a decade under the EUTR, which requires companies to ensure there is no more than a negligible risk that the timber they import or sell was harvested illegally. While the EUDR’s traceability requirements are more robust, they are not fundamentally new and are an extension of practices that responsible companies should already have in place. In order to guarantee a product is made of legally harvested wood, timber, pulp and paper companies should already know the concession on which the wood was harvested and be able to trace it from the source to the point of import or sale in the EU.
An EUDR ‘zero-risk’ category would create a loophole for commodity laundering
There have been several calls to create a new category of countries within the EUDR where there is ‘zero risk’ of deforestation, on top of the existing low, standard and high-risk categories. Companies would not need to provide the geolocation data for goods from those countries and national enforcement authorities would not be obliged to carry out enforcement checks on those goods.
If all or most countries in Europe fall into the ‘zero-risk’ category, this would effectively turn a blind eye to illegal logging in Romania and clearing of old-growth forests in Sweden, as well as forest degradation in other parts of Europe.
The criteria proposed for determining which countries are zero risk are likely to afford this status to non-EU countries, including countries with a track record of timber laundering such as China, which has increased its forest area in recent years. Timber laundering already occurs: sanctioned Russian birch plywood is entering Europe via China and other laundering hubs, showing how illegal or deforestation-linked commodities can slip through under the current system and could continue to do so under a ‘zero risk’ loophole.
Legal analysis published in response to last December’s version of the zero-risk category proposal found that an exemption under the EUDR for zero-risk countries would also likely breach WTO rules.
Earthsight has published two briefings on why the zero-risk category proposal is problematic and how it could harm EU efforts to block Russian and Belarusian ‘conflict timber’.
Due diligence statements, with geolocation, are an important enforcement mechanism and must be maintained
Some of the calls for simplification of the EUDR raise concerns about the need to lodge due diligence statements (DDS) on the TRACES system, and the need to include geolocation polygons in those statements. However, these requirements are essential elements of the law in part designed to respond to shortcomings in the EUTR, which only requires operators to maintain a due diligence system - not to lodge a DDS or routinely obtain geolocation coordinates (except when requested to provide them).
The EUTR has been plagued with enforcement challenges. Ten years after it entered into force, 38 per cent of timber importers checked by national authorities were still non-compliant with the law. Serious penalties for breach of the EUTR are rare: for timber imports, there were only three trade suspensions, one seizure and two financial criminal penalties across the entire EU in 2023. Checks are also low: in 2023, 19 member states carried out fewer than 50 checks on timber importers in the entire year.
Requiring operators to prove that they have traced their goods to the source will ensure that businesses know where their goods were harvested or produced, which is essential to establish negligible risk. The importance of this was affirmed by the Dutch competent authority following their pilot of EUDR implementation. It will also give competent authorities data they can analyse to identify trends and detect likely cases of non-compliance. For example, Germany is already exploring how to use AI to identify non-compliance risks by comparing geolocations with satellite imagery.
Giving traders legal responsibility closes an EUTR loophole
Under the EUDR, ‘traders’ are companies like supermarkets or furniture stores that on-sell goods that have already been placed on the EU market. Some submissions have argued that EUDR legal obligations on traders, particularly the requirement for traders to submit a DDS, are overly bureaucratic. However, these requirements are necessary to address circumvention measures used under the EUTR.
Under the EUTR, the due diligence obligations only fell on the first company to place goods on the EU market – known as the operator. Traders on-selling the goods had no liability under the law. Earthsight documented instances of companies exploiting this loophole by importing high-risk timber from Ukraine via small 'middleman’ companies. In some cases, trains carrying risky timber travelled directly from Ukraine to the mills of large European companies, but legal responsibility under EUTR fell on a smaller third-party import company. This effectively laundered high-risk timber and allowed it to circulate freely through the EU market. It also prevented competent authorities in downstream Member States from taking action against the responsible actors.
As the Commission has clarified in its guidance, the requirements on traders are minimal and will be limited in most cases to receiving and quoting the DDS number provided by the operator – unless there is information to suggest further due diligence is required. This approach places minimal compliance burden on traders, while ensuring importers cannot evade their legal responsibilities by establishing shell companies to act as the operator under the law.
SMEs are already benefitting from targeted measures to reduce requirements
Several submissions to this consultation, particularly from the forestry sector, have raised concerns about the compliance burden on small European businesses. As noted above, most of the relevant trade in commodities is done by large businesses. However, where SMEs (i.e. businesses with under 250 staff or turnover of less than €50 million) are affected, the EUDR already includes concessions for them. SMEs that are downstream operators and traders simply need to collect DDS reference numbers and do not need to conduct due diligence themselves. Only SMEs that are the first to place goods on the EU market are required to undertake due diligence. These ‘SME operators’ have lighter risk mitigation requirements than larger businesses.
Small foresters sourcing wood from European forests can also take advantage of simplified due diligence, as all 27 EU countries are rated low risk. They are only required to verify the origin of their products, without undertaking a full risk assessment and mitigation process.
Excluding commodities from Annex 1 would undermine the EUDR’s impact
At a minimum, the EUDR must continue to apply to all commodities currently listed in Annex 1 – commodities the Commission identified in its impact assessment as most important to cover in order to achieve the law’s objectives.
The leather sector, in particular, has been vocal in this consultation and an earlier consultation calling for leather to be removed from the EUDR. These calls are deeply concerning given the cattle sector’s outsized contribution to global deforestation; the size of the leather industry and its importance for slaughterhouse profitability; the expansion of cattle ranching in threatened biomes and associated human rights abuses; and Europe’s role as a major importer of leather from forest-risk regions. In response, Earthsight and other NGOs prepared a technical briefing countering the false claims made by the industry and presenting evidence in support of leather’s continued inclusion in the law.
Including the EUDR in the omnibus process would give industry another opportunity to call for excluding certain commodities. Doing so before the regulation is even enforced would deny it any real chance of success.
Adding the EUDR to the omnibus would punish compliance efforts
The EUDR entered into force on 29 June 2023, meaning that countries and companies have had more than two years to prepare for implementation. Over this period, the EUDR has already catalysed change, with many actors, from companies to producer countries, actively establishing and testing the systems required for compliance.
Now, just three months from the already delayed implementation date, including the EUDR in the omnibus would be a blow to these actors and jeopardise the steady progress made toward addressing global deforestation. It would punish the leaders who have diligently implemented the law while rewarding those resisting necessary changes. We strongly urge the Commission not to include the EUDR in the proposed omnibus law.
