Danzer Vows to Stick to Original EUDR Schedule

EUDR is a unique opportunity to position wood as the better, more sustainable choice for building and design materials

Dornbirn, Austria, November 11th, 2024. This week, the European Parliament will vote on a potential postponement of the European Deforestation Regulation (EUDR) and could potentially open it up to a re-write. As the world-market leader for sliced hardwood, Danzer counts on the EU Parliament to implement its original legislation.

The European Deforestation Regulation (EUDR) was put into effect on June 29, 2023 with a broad majority in the EU parliament. Since then, many companies in the agricultural, food, and timber sector have been assigning resources to comply with the regulation and get ready for compliance by December 30, 2024, as foreseen by the new regulation. Lately, more and more resistance to EUDR has been voiced by those market players who did not prepare or assign sufficient resources in light of the complexity of the regulation. This prompted the EU Commission to propose a postponement, which will be subject to a vote in the EU Parliament on November 14.

“The European Union process is highly democratic and involves all stakeholders at every stage of the process. The EU must not allow that its rules can be altered merely by sufficient external pressure after the fact. That’s why we support the full implementation of the EUDR by December 30 of this year as originally planned”,
says Hans-Joachim Danzer, CEO of Danzer.

Suggested Changes in Scheduled Implementation
Danzer does not support any changes in the implementation schedule for EUDR. The Regulation had been broadly communicated for years to the industries affected. There was ample time to assign necessary resources for proper implementation up until now when industry still waits for the EU to finalize the last steps. Without preparation, taking these last steps would seem impossible.

Postponing EUDR is wrong:
-    Timber companies that invested in a due diligence system as required by the previous EU Timber Regulation (EUTR) had to invest in an upgrade of their procurement systems to comply with EUDR. While these required upgrades were a logical next step to ensuring more robust value chains, companies needed to dedicate money, employees’ time and professional energy to this project. The additional requirements were manageable.
-    Businesses that choose to comply with the rule of law must be able to rely on the predictability of laws enacted.

Suggested Changes in the Regulation
With questionable justifications, voices in the timber industry call for a major re-write of the regulation, with the aim of weakening the requirements.

Changing EUDR is wrong:
-    Danzer has consistently argued that the EUTR did not address the most relevant problem driving deforestation: the conversion of land for non-timber uses. Finally, the EUDR is an approach that addresses this crucial issue. Danzer sees no compelling reason to weaken the regulation.

Wood products to this day suffer from a reputation of originating from recently deforested lands - a claim that could not be further from the truth in most cases. The EUDR is a unique opportunity to position wood as the better, more sustainable choice for building and design materials, when compared to man-made, highly processed, high-energy alternatives, especially those that pretend to be natural by claiming to be wood.