The EU Deforestation Regulation (EUDR, Regulation (EU) 2023/1115) has a firm date again. After the targeted revision of December 2025 (Regulation (EU) 2025/2650), large and medium-sized companies must comply from 30 December 2026. Micro and small enterprises and natural persons follow on 30 June 2027.
What the EUDR requires
Anyone placing cattle, cocoa, coffee, oil palm, rubber, soya or wood on the EU market, or exporting them from it, falls under the regulation. That includes derived products: leather, chocolate, furniture, tyres, plywood. The goods must be deforestation-free (no deforestation on the production plot after 31 December 2020) and legally produced. The proof is a due diligence statement (DDS) filed in the EU Information System, backed by geolocation coordinates of the plots where the commodity was grown or harvested.
What the 2025 revision changed
- Only the company that first places a product on the EU market files a DDS. Downstream operators and traders pass on the reference number instead of filing their own statements.
- Micro and small primary operators in low-risk countries can file a one-off simplified declaration.
- Printed products such as books and newspapers were taken out of scope.
The customs link
For importers this lands at the border. The DDS reference number goes into the customs declaration, and without a valid statement the goods are not released for free circulation. Suppliers who have never recorded plot coordinates will not produce them in a week, so the bottleneck sits upstream, not at your customs broker.
What this means for you
If you import any of the seven commodities or their derivatives, use the second half of 2026 to map your supply chains back to the plot, ask suppliers for geolocation data now, register in the EU Information System and check the country benchmarking for your origins. We handle the customs side daily and can flag which of your tariff codes fall under the EUDR; see our page on import certificates and inspections for how document checks at import work in practice.
Source: European Commission — Access2Markets: EUDR implementation · EUR-Lex — Regulation (EU) 2025/2650.