EU Deforestation Regulation
EUDR · European Union
Regulation (EU) 2023/1115 requires operators placing certain commodities on the EU market to establish that they are not linked to deforestation after a cut-off date and were produced in accordance with the producing country’s law. Operators file a due diligence statement through the EU TRACES system. The timetable has been postponed more than once, so the dates below matter more than any general description: large and medium operators from 30 December 2026, micro and small enterprises and natural persons from 30 June 2027. A simplification package accompanying the latest postponement introduced a "downstream operator" category and allows some small or micro primary operators to file a simplified declaration instead of a full due diligence statement.
Key dates
| Date | What changes | Applies to |
|---|---|---|
| 30 December 2026 | Main EUDR obligations apply. Operators must hold a due diligence statement before placing covered commodities on the EU market. Verified against: European Commission Access2Markets guidance on the postponement, checked 2026-08-09 | Large and medium operators and traders |
| 30 June 2027 | The same obligations extend to the remaining operators. Verified against: European Commission Access2Markets guidance on the postponement, checked 2026-08-09 | Micro and small enterprises, and natural persons |
All dated obligations across every rule we cover are on the regulation timeline.
Requirements mapped to evidence
| What the rule asks for | Evidence that may bear on it, and its limits |
|---|---|
| Identify the operator and the supplying entities. | Company registration status and identifier from the producing country’s registry, where one is publicly accessible. |
| Establish geolocation of the plots of production. | Property registration codes or coordinates, generally supplied by the supplier. Public registries rarely link an export shipment to a plot. |
| Establish that production was in accordance with relevant local legislation. | Public environmental embargo, sanction, and labour registers indicate recorded findings. They do not establish the absence of a breach. |
| Assess and mitigate risk of non-compliance. | Documented public-record checks with sources, dates, and stated limitations form part of a risk assessment. They do not constitute one. |
What this does not establish
- No public record in any producing country we have assessed can, by itself, establish that a plot is deforestation-free.
- Absence of a company from an enforcement register is not evidence of lawful production.
- The legality limb depends on the producing country’s own law, which is not uniformly published in machine-readable form anywhere we have assessed.
Producing countries in scope here
Sources
Every statement above is drawn from these primary sources. Check them yourself — we link to the authority, not to a summary of it.
- Regulation (EU) 2023/1115 on deforestation-free products — European Union
- TRACES — the system through which due diligence statements are filed — European Commission