EPP draft plan seeks to place anti-deforestation law on back-burner

The European People’s Party (EPP) wants, as a priority for the next mandate, to postpone the EU’s anti-deforestation law, scheduled to take effect in January 2025, according to a draft of the party’s five-year plan seen by Euractiv.

The new anti-deforestation regulation (EUDR) will force companies to demonstrate that certain products, such as cocoa, palm oil, coffee and cattle, have not contributed to deforestation before they can be placed on the EU market.

In its draft priorities for the 2024-2029 Commission work programme, the EPP proposes delaying the implementation of the EUDR and to address “problems related to its implementation.”

The document will be discussed at an EPP group meeting in Cascais, Portugal, on 2-5 July.

Peter Liese, a prominent German Member of the European Parliament (MEP) and the EPP’s environment spokesperson has spearheaded the opposition to the law’s imminent enforcement.

Liese, recently re-elected as MEP, supports the regulation’s goal of ending global deforestation but criticised the final text as a “bureaucratic monster,” blaming greens, socialists, leftists, and French Liberals.

“If we [the EPP] wouldn’t have participated in the negotiations, the EUDR would be even worse,” he told Euractiv.

Nevertheless, an EPP lawmaker, Luxembourgish MEP Christophe Hansen, represented the Parliament in negotiations with member states on the EUDR.

The anti-deforestation law received overwhelming support from the Parliament during a final vote in April 2023, including from the centre-right EPP. Only 44 MEPs voted against and 43 abstained.

The pioneering legislation, the first of its kind worldwide, was among the last key environmental files to pass through Parliament without significant opposition from the EPP.

Liese explained that when the EUDR was approved, it was “a different time,” with “a majority” in Parliament pushing for a more ambitious Green Deal.

Only a month later, in May 2023, EPP members walked out from negotiations on the contentious Nature Restoration Law, sparking unprecedented opposition to new green legislation affecting farming.

However, Liese noted that he and other EPP members had anticipated the difficulties linked to implementing the anti-deforestation regulation in a short time.

For this reason, he decided not to participate in the EUDR vote in Parliament, as he did not want to vote against the group’s position.

“I didn’t want to oppose it [the regulation] because everybody agrees that we need to stop deforestation,” said Liese.

Liese emphasised that the implementation of the rules would negatively affect small and medium-sized companies (SMEs), such as European coffee roasters and foresters.

“We need to keep the legislation. I’m not in favour of abolishing it, but we need to modify it,” he stressed.

The EUDR has come under fire over the past months, particularly from agricultural ministers, who fear it will impose an additional burden on the bloc’s farmers and traders in the affected commodities.

Additionally, the guidelines for operators, expected by spring, have not yet been presented by the Commission, generating uncertainty among the EU’s private sector and the bloc’s trade partners.

The new obligations will apply from January 2025 and by July 2025 for SMEs.

[Edited by Angelo Di Mambro and Chris Powers]
*Additional reporting by Jonathan Packroff

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