On October 2nd, the EU Commission released the official Implementation Guidance for the EUDR and proposed delaying the regulation by 12 months. If approved by the European Parliament and the Council, the EU Deforestation Regulation will go into effect on December 30, 2025 for large companies and June 30, 2026 for small and micro-sized enterprises.
The EU's delay of EUDR implementation by 12 months offers the opportunity for companies to tackle the key challenges of supplier participation, data accuracy, mitigation, integration, and legality. It also underlines the EU’s commitment to enforcing the regulation to the fullest extent of the law, as this 12 month delay allows competent authorities to ensure they are fully prepared as well.
In cooperation with the EU Commission, Sourcemap was able to test several GeoJSON files and see the extensive validation checks the EU will use to analyze geolocation data. The EU Deforestation Registry will be capable of identifying various errors, including the plausibility of polygons submitted in a due diligence statement. With an additional 12 months before implementation, competent authorities will have far better tools at their disposal for due diligence statement inspections and audits.
You can read more about what this delay means and how companies should prepare here.
The official EUDR guidance answers several outstanding questions about the law, including:
- Submitting due diligence statements as a non-SME Trader - The official guidelines confirm that non-SME traders do in fact have to submit a due diligence statement (DDS) when making available on the market a relevant product for the first time. This DDS may reference the due diligence reference number (DDR) of the product placed on the market by the original Operator. The DDS must be produced regardless of who is next in the supply chain - that means regardless of selling directly to consumers or other actors further down the supply chain, non-SME traders must produce a DDS when making available products on the market.
- Legality and third party certifications - The commission outlined in more detail the criteria needed to be considered to meet due diligence requirements for legality and risk assessments. They outlined several questions that must be answered when conducting risk assessments and described how third party certifications and company policies can meet legality requirements, including the following:
- Where was the product produced? What are the product-specific risks? Is the supply chain complex?
- Is there concern in relation to the country of production and origin or parts thereof, such as level of corruption, prevalence of document and data falsification, lack of law enforcement, violations of international human rights, armed conflict or prevalence of sanctions imposed by the UN Security Council or the Council of the European Union?
- Are all documents showing compliance with applicable legislation made available by the supplier, and are they verifiable immediately?
- Sourcing from SMEs that don't have a DDS - SMEs will not have to comply with EUDR until June 30, 2026. If a company sources products from an SME during this transition period, then non-SME operators/traders further down the supply chain will also be exempt from the EUDR (they will not have to do deforestation analysis, legality, or submitting due diligence statements) for those particular products. During this transition period, non-SMEs will still need to comply with the Regulation for any products that are not sourced from SMEs.
- CSDDD and EUDR - Since the EUDR due diligence requirements are more stringent, they will take precedence over the CSDDD requirements as it relates to reporting. This means that in a CSDDD report a company's EUDR due diligence efforts must be reported in totality, rather than just reporting on the requirements relevant to CSDDD.
- Best Practices Repository - To further facilitate trade and compliance with the EUDR, a repository of practices will be set up to which economic operators may refer when carrying out their due diligence for placing and making available products on the EU market, and competent authorities when performing the relevant checks. This will be published before the Regulation enters into force.
The full text of the Implementation Guidance can be found here. The Commission has also published updated FAQs to provide further guidance for companies. To learn more about what the proposed EUDR delay and implementation guidance means for you and how Sourcemap can help, reach out to our team of experts at info@sourcemap.com.
