European Commission publishes country benchmarking for EUDR

Brussels – The European Commission has published "the first benchmarking list", which classifies countries according to their ‘low', ‘standard', or ‘high' risk of deforestation.

The country classification takes into account the production of the seven commodities covered by the EU Deforestation Regulation (EUDR), namely cattle, cocoa, coffee, palm oil, rubber, soya and wood.

The list (click here), published 22 May, places the majority of countries in the ‘low-and standard-risk’ categories with Belarus, Democratic People's Republic of Korea, Myanmar and Russian Federation marked as high-risk.

According to the Commission the risk classification “defines the extent of compliance checks that member states' competent authorities have to foresee for a country (1% for ‘low risk', 3% for ‘standard' and 9% for ‘high risk').”

Sourcing from low-risk countries entails simplified due diligence obligations for operators and traders.

This means that they need to collect information, but not assess and mitigate risks.

The countries which are identified in the high-risk category are subject to sanctions from the UN Security Council or the Council of the EU on imports or exports of the relevant commodities and relevant products.

The publication is an important milestone ahead of the entry into application of the law on 30 Dec 2025 for large companies and 30 June 2026 for micro- and small enterprises.