the European Commission wants to postpone the entry into force of the tetx by one year

Intended to protect forests, the new regulation was to come into force at the end of this year 2024. It aims to prohibit the marketing in Europe of a series of products such as cocoa, soya, palm oil, coffee , beef or even leather and furniture if they come from deforested lands after December 2020. But Europe’s global partners have repeatedly expressed their concerns and Brussels has given in.

The European Commission’s proposal to postpone the deadline by one year, which must still be validated by the Member States and Parliament, comes in the midst of negotiations for a free trade agreement between the European Union and the countries of Mercosur, the common market of South America. The new European regulations against deforestation, promulgated in 2023, but delivered painfully, are causing an outcry from the agri-food business community and the countries concerned who see it as a stab for their breeders and farmers. Brazil speaks of a “unilateral punitive instrument“Even Germany called for additional time to give businesses time to prepare.

The European anti-deforestation law is an obstacle to the free trade project between Europe and South American countries ardently defended by Germany for its own commercial interests. Berlin does not hesitate to describe the device as “bureaucratic monster“. The additional one-year delay gives food for thought to non-governmental organizations which fear that pressure from the right and the far right, reinforced by the European elections in June, will unravel the environmental rules previously adopted. NGOs denounce “a chainsaw blow” from the President of the European Commission, the German Ursula von der Leyen. According to the World Wide Fund for Nature WWF, with its imports of soya and palm oil, in particular, the EU is today the second destroyer of tropical forests behind China and ahead of the United States.