EU Commission blames computer problems for second one-year delay to deforestation law

The European Commission has blamed massive overuse of its IT system needed to declare compliance with the bloc’s new deforestation law for its decision to postpone its implementation for a second consecutive year. 

In a letter to commission president Ursula von der Leyen on Tuesday (23 September), EU environment commissioner Jessika Roswall asked for another one-year delay to the EU Deforestation Regulation (EUDR).  

The commission will also propose the creation of a new ‘no-risk’ category as part of the benchmarking regime which determines compliance —which would effectively exempt many countries from the regulation entirely.

The IT system for the new regime, which commission officials described as an ‘in-house corporate system’ that is currently used in about 20 other EU policy areas, must be used by importers and potential buyers of products such as cocoa, coffee beans and timber to make declarations that their products have not been associated with deforestation. 

“It has become apparent that the demand exceeds widely the expectations that we had,” a senior commission official told reporters.

“This poses a risk to the function of the system,” he said, adding that “we have come to the conclusion that we have to step back and assess how to manage these risks.”

Commission officials said that an initial estimate that around 100 million due-diligence statements (DDS) would be lodged each year DDSs per year — but that new estimates were for ten times as many, from hundreds of thousands of registered operators.