This is a new symptom of declining European ambitions in terms of ecology. European countries support delaying the implementation of the anti-deforestation law for one year, from the end of 2025 to the end of 2026, diplomats reported to Agence France-Presse on Wednesday, November 19. At the request of Germany and Austria, which have been highly critical of this text, the European Union (EU) has also passed a review clause planned for April 2026, to review this law even before it comes into force.
This symbolic text, considered pioneering by environmental organizations, aims to ban the marketing of products such as palm oil, cocoa, coffee, soybeans and wood from deforested land in Europe after 2020. The text continues to be criticized by agribusiness circles and countries such as Brazil and the United States. The EU had delayed implementation for the first time from 2024 to 2025, before a new deadline was endorsed on Wednesday.
The European Commission has paved the way for this additional delay by citing IT problems in setting up the product traceability system. But after citing a one-year delay, Brussels finally proposed to the Twenty-Seven to postpone the law for six months. European countries have decided to go further, especially under the leadership of Germany, which is concerned about additional costs for its country’s forestry officers.
“Disaster signal”
The compromise, which still has to be submitted to the European Parliament, aims to come into force at the end of 2026. But the many delays related to this law have angered NGOs who are left wondering whether the EU really intends to implement it.
“The signals are very bad from all points of view” COP, the UN climate conference in Brazil, lamented Pierre-Jean Sol Brasier, from the NGO Fern, a specialist in forest protection. “This is very sad, we are creating instability for companies that have invested millions of dollars” to be prepared, he assured.
This regulation prohibiting deforestation has the support of certain companies in Europe such as the Italian group Ferrero, which produces, among other things, Nutella spread. “We made investments in good faith because we thought there was a direction to follow, and now that is being called into question.”regretted one of its senior executives, Francesco Tramontin, during a press conference on Monday.
But this policy is opposed by a number of agribusiness giants, as well as countries in Asia and the Americas, who are concerned about the additional costs that farmers, breeders and forestry operators will have to bear.
After adopting highly ambitious climate measures for several years, the EU is slowing progress on some of them to give breathing room to companies, which face stiff global competition.
