“It’s like throwing a fire extinguisher out the window of a burning building. » Environmental protection associations expressed serious concern on Wednesday, October 2, after the European Commission proposed postponing for one year the implementation of the regulation on imported deforestation, considered one of the key texts of the green deal. “Retreating from a law of this type in the middle of the fire season in the Amazon is a very bad sign. laments Boris Patentreger, French director of the NGO Mighty Earth. The Commission gave in to the lobbies. » « Ursula von der Leyen [la présidente de la Commission] condemns forests to another year of destruction »Greenpeace also reacts.
Adopted in 2023 and coming into force on December 30, this regulation aims to prohibit the import and export of a series of products (cocoa, coffee, soybeans, palm oil, wood, beef, rubber, leather, etc. .) from deforestation. . It is based on a traceability system: to market a good on the European market, companies must be able to guarantee that it is not associated with a deforested plot after December 31, 2020, thanks to the use of geolocation data and satellite photographs. The European Union is responsible for around 16% of global trade-related deforestation.
Brussels’ decision comes in a context of strong tensions, while multiple actors have been urging for months to suspend the application of the text, considered too complex and too vague. This is the case of many states such as Indonesia, Brazil, Ivory Coast but also the United States, Argentina and Bolivia. Brasilia, for example, recently criticized “a unilateral and punitive instrument”, counter to “principle of sovereignty”.
Berlin support
Within the Union itself, Austria, supported by twenty States, requested in March a “directed review” text and an extension “considerable” of the implementation period. Several economic sectors have also stepped forward, including the agri-food industry, livestock, commerce and wood. In France, for example, around twenty organizations in the forestry and logging sector have requested the postponement of a “inapplicable regulation”.
The European People’s Party (EPP), from which Ursula von der Leyen comes, became a spokesperson for these demands and used all its weight to achieve that deadline, with the support of certain capitals, including Berlin. “Taking into account the comments received from international partners on the status of their preparations”For this reason, the Commission put on the table, on Wednesday, a proposal aimed at postponing the entry into force until December 30, 2025 for large companies and June 30, 2026 for small and very small companies.
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