With 371 votes in favor, 240 against and 30 abstentions, the European Parliament approves the Commission’s proposal to postpone the entry into application of the EUDR by one year. During the same session, Strasbourg approved amendments introducing two interesting innovations regarding the commodity country of origin risk benchmark.
Business-friendly deferral
Allowing businesses time to catch up with the requirements of the EUDR. Which otherwise, in the tanning perspective, risked blocking international trade in bovine hides. It was on this premise that the Commission in early October proposed a one-year postponement of the EUDR: a motion endorsed in mid-October by the European Council and now, with the November 14 vote, by the Parliament as well. The regulation, then, will come into effect from December 30, 2025 for large companies and from June 30, 2026 for SMEs. The die is cast.
Risk benchmarks
The vote also bounded European authorities to two elements. First, to finalize the country risk classification system by June 30, 2025 (depending on the benchmark, in fact, companies are required to follow different processes when conducting their due diligence). And then to introduce the “no-risk” category, which complements the existing categories of “low,” “standard,” and “high” risk.
The exclusion of leather from Annex I
As we have told you in our chronicles, the entry into application of the EUDR has greatly worried the European industry: UNIC – Italian Tanneries and Cotance, representing the leather supply chain, have repeatedly explained that the regulation posed operational challenges of very difficult resolution. Admittedly, a year’s time to square off with international partners and stakeholders is good news. But the goal of tanning, we say in the November issue of the monthly Tannery, remains the exclusion of cowhide from the fateful Annex I, the annex that lists commodities that must be subject to the EUDR. Cowhide, the Sant’Anna Institute in Pisa has shown, and UNIC has claimed before UNECE, is not a driver of deforestation: it simply should not be in Annex I.
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