COTANCE joins calls for ‘stop-the-clock’ mechanism on EUDR
Leather industry body COTANCE is one of 24 business organisations in the European Union that have issued a new joint open statement on the European Union Deforestation Regulation (EUDR).
The European Commissioner for the environment, Jessika Roswall, said in September that she was requesting a second 12-month delay to the application of EUDR, giving businesses extra time to prepare. However, on October 21, the Commission published a proposal that, if approved, will see EUDR come into effect for larger companies, as previously scheduled, on December 30, 2025.
For small and micro operators, the proposal does ask for a six-month delay, meaning EUDR will come into application for them on December 30, 2026.
On October 28, COTANCE and 23 bodies representing a range of industries issued an open statement urging the Commission to pause and reconsider before moving forward. They called for it to introduce a ‘stop-the-clock’ mechanism so that policymakers can make “a proper and a comprehensive assessment of EUDR’s impact and implementation” before the regulation comes into application.
They said the October 21 proposal and the challenging timeline to have it approved by the European Parliament and the European Council risk undermining the credibility and the enforcement of EUDR, while placing European operators in “an untenable position of legal and operational uncertainty”.
To expect companies to be ready to comply with a regulation that has been “hastily renegotiated” only weeks before its entry into application is “unrealistic and unacceptable”, the open statement said.
It also said that, in practice, operators of all sizes will be forced to comply from the same date. The statement explained that “the operational reality of the market”, with integrated supply chains, means medium-sized and large companies interact with much smaller operators all the time.
As a result, smaller operators “will be required to align immediately to maintain business relations”, the statement said. It insisted that this makes the idea of an extra 12 months for small companies to prepare “illusory”.
COTANCE and the other 23 industry organisations that signed the statement said they strongly supported EUDR’s objective of combating deforestation, but that the obligations EUDR imposes on businesses have to be made “truly workable”.
