The European Commission Proposes Targeted EUDR Simplification Measures

On 21 October 2025, the European Commission (“Commission”) submitted a proposal to amend the European Union’s (“EU”) Regulation on Deforestation-Free Products (“EUDR”),¹ aiming to reduce regulatory burden on businesses while attempting to preserve the core principles of the regulation (the “Proposal”). Contrary to Commission’s previous intention to postpone EUDR’s entry into application for all stakeholders until 30 December 2026, the Proposal postpones entry of the EUDR into application only for micro-undertakings or small undertakings. The Proposal also contains several substantive amendments aimed at reducing obligations imposed on small EU primary producers, relieving downstream operators and traders of most obligations, and providing for a grace period to allow businesses to adapt to the legislative changes.

While the proposed amendments are lauded by many stakeholders as decreasing unnecessary administrative and financial burden, they have been tabled by the Commission two months prior to 30 December 2025, the date currently set for EUDR’s entry into application. To become effective before that deadline, the Proposal must be approved through the Ordinary Legislative Procedure and published in the EU Official Journal.

1. What lies ahead?

The Proposal is subject to the Ordinary Legislative Procedure that requires a consent of the Council of the European Union ("Council") as well as of the European Parliament ("Parliament"). Even if the Council and the Parliament were to agree with the Proposal as it currently stands—and even if the Parliament were to employ an urgency procedure for its consideration —it would be challenging to ensure that the Ordinary Legislative Procedure is completed before 30 December 2025 and that the amendments to the EUDR enter into force before 30 December 2025. However, the Parliament and the Council do not currently appear to agree with the Proposal. This has manifested during the 27 October exchange at the Agriculture and Fisheries Council, when most Member States maintained that the proposed amendments are not sufficient to reduce red tape, and requested a one-year postponement for all stakeholders and further simplification. Therefore, the legislative process is not likely to be smooth and speedy, and chances are high that the EUDR will enter into application on 30 December 2025 as-is.

2. What are the practical implications of the main proposed simplification?

(a) Simplification for certain micro and small primary operators

The Proposal introduces a new category, “micro and small primary operators,” for which there would be no obligation to submit due diligence statements (“DDSs”) on a continuous basis. However, such operators would be required to submit a one-time simplified declaration in the Information System. A simplified declaration may contain either geolocations or the postal address of all plots of land where the relevant commodities that the relevant product contains, or has been made using, were produced. The Information System would assign a declaration identifier to such declarations, which identifier would need to be passed downstream. 

Noteworthy, where micro and small primary operators are unable to exercise due diligence, the Proposal suggests that they would still be able to place their products on the EU market.

This category would cover natural persons and micro- or small undertakings from low-risk countries worldwide which place on the EU market or export their own relevant products (that they themselves have grown/harvested on plots of land).

In practical terms, if enacted, this simplification will benefit EU smallholder producers (farmers and foresters), but not smallholder producers from third countries because smallholders from third countries never place their products on the EU market (i.e., they never import to the EU and are not “operators”). Their produce is usually purchased by middlemen and undergoes at least primary processing in third countries.

(b) Simplification for downstream operators and traders

The Proposal eliminates obligations to ascertain that due diligence was exercised upstream and to submit a DDS for downstream operators and traders. However, the obligation to collect and pass on DDS reference numbers remains. Downstream operators and traders are also required to collect and pass on declaration identifiers assigned to micro and small primary operators. In addition, non-SME downstream operators and traders would need to register in the Information System.

According to the Commission’s Proposal, downstream operators and traders no longer need to submit DDSs and no longer retain responsibility for compliance of the relevant products. At the same time, downstream operators and traders are required to possess certain information (including reference numbers of upstream DDSs or declaration identifiers associated with the respective relevant products) to be able to make the relevant products available on the Union market. Furthermore, downstream operators remain subject to checks and non-compliance may entail corrective actions and penalties.

In practical terms, while proposing to relieve downstream operators and traders from most EUDR obligations, including submission of DDSs, the Commission shifts IT problems faced by the Information System to the downstream operators and traders.

According to the Proposal, DDSs would be submitted only by operators that first place the relevant products on the Union market. This means that downstream operators/traders dealing with relevant products originating from numerous EU farmers and foresters would need to obtain, link to their products, and pass down the supply chain not one (or a few) reference numbers of DDSs, but as many DDS reference numbers and/or declaration identifiers as there are farmers and/or foresters whose relevant products have contributed to a certain quantity of final product produced by the downstream operator or shipment traded by a trader. In some cases, this might amount to thousands of reference numbers and identifiers per shipment. 

This simplification will effectively require downstream operators and traders to adjust their IT systems that have not been designed to handle such volumes of data for each product and each shipment. For imported relevant products, the situation will likely be less grave, but nevertheless would require adjustments to the IT systems of the downstream operators and traders.  

3. Entry into application for operators/traders and grace period

According to the Proposal, entry into application for large and medium undertakings would remain unchanged, 30 December 2025 (no postponement). Entry into application for micro- and small undertakings established as such as of 31 December 2024 would be postponed to 30 December 2026. Entry into application for micro- and small primary operators would be set for 30 December 2026.

The Proposal also envisages a grace period until 30 June 2026 for checks and enforcement by competent authorities with respect to large and medium undertakings. This means that while medium and large operators/traders must comply with the EUDR starting from 30 December 2025, the competent authorities would not conduct checks until 30 June 2026 to enable these stakeholders to adapt. At the same time, the competent authorities would be able to issue warnings and recommendations to achieve compliance where they become aware of non-compliance.

4. Will the proposed changes make the EUDR workable?

In short, no, as the Proposal does not address EUDR’s cumbersome requirements, and in particular the legality requirement.

To be able to place the relevant products on the Union market, the operators must exercise due diligence to ensure that the relevant products are (i) deforestation-free; (ii) commodities contained in the relevant products have been harvested/grown in accordance with the legislation of the country of production; (iii) covered by a due diligence statement (DDS) submitted to the Information System; and (iv) traceable back to the plots of land where these commodities have been produced. The EUDR also requires segregation of compliant and non-compliant relevant products to be maintained through the whole supply chain.

Compliance with the requirements (i), (iii), and (iv) may be automated to a large extent (at a significant cost). End-to-end traceability may be achieved using blockchain or similar technology, and deforestation-free status may be assessed by specialized service providers using artificial intelligence, although additional analysis is likely to be required in many cases, in particular for sources of rubber and oil palm. 

However, compliance with requirement (ii), the legality requirement, as currently interpreted by the Commission in its Guidance, is hard to achieve. To comply with the legality requirement, the operators must conduct or arrange for a comprehensive annual audit of each and every farm or estate where the commodities are expected to be sourced. Such audit must confirm that each such farm or estate produces the relevant commodities in compliance with the legislation of the respective country with respect to (a) land use rights; (b) environmental protection; (c) forest-related rules, including forest management and biodiversity conservation, where directly related to wood harvesting; (d) third parties’ rights; (e) labour rights; (f) human rights protected under international law; (g) the principle of free, prior and informed consent (“FPIC”), including as set out in the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples; and (h) tax, anti-corruption, trade and customs regulations. Operators must be aware of the respective legislation in each of the source countries and maintain listing of such legislation, regardless of the number of jurisdictions and languages involved. 

To illustrate, back in October 2024, during the 20th meeting of the Expert Group/Multi-Stakeholder Platform on Protecting and Restoring the World’s Forests (Deforestation), the Rubber Authority of Thailand (“RAOT”) provided information that one shipment (20 tonnes) of products produced from concentrated latex contained fresh latex collected by more than 1,400 smallholders, whereas the number of rubber farms in Thailand (a low-risk country) is about 1.5 million. This means that to comply with the EUDR for one shipment of 20 tonnes, an operator (importer) must collect “adequately conclusive and verifiable information” that 1,400 smallholders harvest fresh latex in compliance with all relevant legislation of Thailand. Where shipments are frequent and where the supply base is not fixed, an operator is facing a daunting task of potentially collecting “adequately conclusive and verifiable information” for about 1.5 million rubber farms. According to the Commission’s Guidance Document for the EUDR, this obligation “should be understood as including, where applicable: official documents issued by countries’ authorities, such as... administrative permits; documents showing contractual obligations, including contracts and agreements with indigenous peoples or local communities; complementary information issued by public and private certification or other third-party verified schemes; judicial decisions; impact assessments, management plans, environmental audit reports”. The Guidance further considers the following additional documents to also be useful: “documents showing company policies and codes of conduct, voluntary self-declaration of producers of relevant commodities in which a producer declares that the product was produced in compliance with the legislation of the country of production, social responsibility agreements between private actors and third right holders, specific reports on tenure and rights claims and conflicts.”

The Proposal does not reduce this burden of compliance with the legality requirement which remains one of the key obstacles for the EUDR implementation once it enters into application.