The revised regulation, known as the EU Deforestation Regulation, is now scheduled to apply from the end of 2026 for large companies and from mid-2027 for small and micro operators.<\/p>\n
The law, first proposed by the European Commission in 2021 and adopted in 2023, is designed to block products linked to deforestation or forest degradation from entering or leaving EU markets. It applies to widely traded commodities such as cocoa, coffee, palm oil, beef, timber, rubber and soy, as well as processed goods derived from them, including chocolate, tires, furniture and leather products.<\/p>\n
For African economies, the regulation has never been abstract. The EU remains one of the largest destination markets for African agricultural and forest-risk commodities. C\u00f4te d\u2019Ivoire and Ghana together supply more than 60 percent of the world\u2019s cocoa, much of it consumed in Europe.<\/p>\n
Ethiopia, Uganda and Kenya depend heavily on EU-bound coffee exports. Palm oil from West and Central Africa, timber from the Congo Basin, and rubber from countries such as Cameroon and Liberia are all embedded in supply chains now subject to EU scrutiny.<\/p>\n At the core of the regulation is a due diligence requirement that obliges companies placing covered products on the EU market to trace them back to the specific plot of land where they were produced and demonstrate that the land was not deforested after December 31, 2020.<\/p>\n Read also:\u00a0ISSB eases financed emissions reporting under IFRS S2 as global adoption expands<\/a><\/p>\n Companies must also show compliance with all relevant local laws in producer countries, including land tenure, labor and environmental regulations. These requirements raised early alarm among African exporters, cooperatives and governments, many of whom lack comprehensive land registries, digital mapping systems or interoperable data platforms.<\/p>\n The newly adopted revisions respond to mounting concerns from companies and governments about the administrative and technical readiness of supply chains. Under the updated framework, reporting obligations are narrowed to the operators who first place regulated products on the EU market.<\/p>\n Downstream actors such as retailers and manufacturers will no longer be required to submit their own due diligence statements, relying instead on reference numbers generated upstream. This change reduces repeated reporting across long supply chains that often stretch from smallholder farms in Africa to processors, traders and retailers in Europe.<\/p>\n For small and micro operators, including many African producers exporting directly or through niche channels, the rules are further simplified. These operators will now be required to submit only a one-off declaration in the EU\u2019s digital compliance system, rather than repeated filings. If required information is already available in the system, no additional action will be necessary. Certain low-risk printed products, including books and newspapers, have also been removed from the regulation\u2019s scope.<\/p>\n The one-year delay reflects deeper challenges behind the scenes. EU institutions acknowledged that the IT infrastructure required to process millions of due diligence submissions was not yet fully capable of handling the expected data volume. Earlier this year, the Commission had considered a second delay before settling on a revised timeline paired with simplifications. Both the European Parliament and the Council ultimately pushed implementation further than initially proposed, citing legal certainty and supply chain stability.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/Academy-Website-ads-5.jpg\")
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