<
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/dec/31/eu-legislation-intended-to-fight-deforestation-has-been-effectively-dismantled>
"It was hailed by campaigners around the world as a game-changing piece of
legislation that would help stop deforestation.
But when a bullet-ridden version of the EU’s deforestation regulation, once
supposed to be the crown of the Green Deal, finally limped across the
legislative line this month, not even its architect was smiling, and one
politician said it had been pretty much “dismantled”.
Hugo Schally, the law’s original author who has since retired from the European
Commission, told the
Guardian he believed it had been “hollowed out” by the
removal of obligations on downstream traders to verify the origin of
commodities such as palm oil, soy, wood, beef, rubber, cocoa and coffee.
“There now will be fewer actors with direct obligations, fewer data points
along the value chain and less precise origin data, which will make enforcement
and eventual prosecution more difficult,” he said.
The Green party’s vice-president in the European Parliament, Marie Toussaint,
went further, saying that delays, loopholes and an added exemption for printed
products – an apparent sop to appease President Donald Trump – amounted to the
“political dismantling” of the law. She called on the commission to withdraw
the proposal.
It is a far cry from the hopes of the 1.2 million EU citizens who signed the
petition kickstarting the process to ban deforestation-linked products from
Europe’s market in 2020. Launching the proposal in 2021, the EU’s then-Green
Deal commissioner, Frans Timmermans, trumpeted it as “the most ambitious … ever
put forward” to combat forest loss.
Four hundred and 20 million hectares of forest – an area larger than the EU
itself – have disappeared since 1990, in part thanks to Europe’s consumption
patterns. Timmermans said that the draft law showed “our willingness to walk
our ‘green talks’ globally”.
But critics say that the proposal’s unravelling shows the EU’s willingness to
walk back the green talk. The law was twice delayed, for 12 months each time,
over IT issues, drawing condemnation even from the environment commissioner who
initially oversaw it. “By reopening this file instead of solving a simple IT
problem, the commission opened Pandora’s box,” Toussaint said."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
