The European Parliament opens the door for further simplification of anti-deforestation regulation

Today, the European Parliament reunited in plenary adopted its amendments to the European Commission’s proposal, presented on 21 October 2025, aimed to simplify the EU anti-deforestation regulation (EUDR). This regulation is of utmost importance to European farmers and constitutes an essential tool to combat global deforestation and promote sustainable, fair trade, especially considering that the European Union remains the second largest importer of tropical deforestation and associated emissions.  

Farm Europe welcomes the adoption of the amendments requiring the European Commission to carry out a simplification review of the EUDR and present a report by 30 April 2026. The Commission is also invited to table a legislative proposal to further simplify the regulation for operators, downstream operators and traders in countries with negligible risk of deforestation. This provision echoes the Council’s position adopted earlier this month and represents an improvement to the Commission’s proposal which falls short in effectively addressing the excessive administrative burden and complexities that would weigh on the shoulders of European farmers. 

MEPs also voted in favour of measures to reduce the administrative obligations for downstream operators and traders, by deleting the mandatory requirement to pass on the reference numbers or declaration identifiers to their buyers and by limiting traceability obligation to the ‘first’ downstream operator or trader. They will have to collect reference numbers of due diligence statements but are not required to pass them on. This obligation will not apply to others further down the supply chain.

Furthermore, the Parliament decided for a general postponement of the application of core articles of EUDR from 30 December 2025 to 30 December 2026, and for a specific postponement to 30 June 2027 for micro and small undertakings.   

In view of the upcoming review by the European Commission, Farm Europe calls for real and meaningful simplification for EU farmers. First, due diligence requirements applied in the case of low-risk countries (like EU Member States) should be further simplified and when it comes to livestock, the existing traceability system should be extended to all the value chain and not only to micro and small operators.