What does the new EU Deforestation Regulation mean for U.S. hardwood exporters? Rupert Oliver, Environmental Policy Director at the American Hardwood Export Council (AHEC), shares his insights on the EUDR’s implications for the industry.
There was a flurry of activity around the EU Deforestation Regulation (EUDR) at the end of April, when the European Commission (EC) was required, under the December 2025 EUDR Amendment legislation, to publish a report on additional “simplifications” to reduce the costs of implementation. The report duly arrived only a little late, on 4 May, alongside an updated set of guidance and FAQs, drafts of a Delegated Act on product scope and an Implementing Act on the IT system. As widely expected, this new package from the EC fell short of delivering meaningful measures that might simplify implementation outside the EU.
AHEC and EUDR: An Overview
While AHEC supports the EUDR’s aims to fight deforestation and unsustainable agricultural practices, we had hoped for a small but meaningful change to the legislation vis-à-vis the requirement to provide geolocation data for the specific “plot(s) of land” from which all regulated material (including wood) placed on the EU market is sourced. Under the EUDR, “a plot of land” is defined as “within a single real-estate property”.
We believe this requirement discriminates against products from smaller landowners, especially when sourced from diverse natural forests, as is the case in the U.S. hardwood industry. This poses a significant obstacle to U.S. hardwood exports to the EU. A single shipment of forest products from the United States may originate from hundreds, if not thousands, of individual plots of land, meaning a single container could require tens of thousands of geolocation data points, even though it comes from a country with strong forest governance and negligible risk of deforestation. AHEC maintains that providing property-level geolocation data for every plot of land contributing to a consignment of U.S. hardwoods is technically unfeasible and has formally requested that the EC remove the reference to “within a single real estate” from the “plot of land” definition.
Proposed Change to “Plot of Land” Definition Not Considered
In the weeks leading up to the report’s release, the EC had signaled it would not amend the legal text further, having already revised it last year to remove most due diligence requirements for commodity production and trade within the EU, putting the focus almost exclusively on commodity imports from outside the region.
The EC report’s main conclusion is that “the measures introduced in 2024 and 2025, together with the December 2025 amendments and new simplification measures accompanying this Report, lead to a substantial reduction in administrative burden and a considerable simplification for companies which fall under the scope of the Regulation. This reduction is particularly relevant for operators sourcing from low-risk countries, for micro and small primary operators, and for downstream actors, notably through the introduction of simplified procedures”.
This statement implies that operators sourcing from all “low-risk countries” will benefit from the latest round of simplifications. However, in practice, the benefits are mainly aimed at operators sourcing commodities produced within the EU.
AHEC’s submission asking for the “plot of land” definition to be amended to remove the reference to “within a single real estate” is not addressed anywhere in the EC report. This is despite the incontrovertible fact that the definition cannot be applied to the three-quarters of the world’s forest area not in “real estate”, and that removing the phrase would help level the playing field between commodities from non-industrial, industrial and state forest owners outside the EU.
The omission also came despite the measure being recommended by EU lawyers commissioned by AHEC and gaining support from the entire U.S. forest products sector, North American tribal leaders and CEI Bois, the representative organization of the EU wood manufacturing sector, among others.
The EC’s failure to consider making this amendment is disappointing, but perhaps not surprising. Introducing a change that might be universally applied runs counter to the EC’s apparent political imperative to reduce bureaucracy for domestic producers and industry.
Due Diligence and Traceability Obligations Removed for EU Production and Trade
For EU producers and manufacturers, the changes are indeed far-reaching. In fact, the EC report and new guidelines make it very clear that no “due diligence” will be required for regulated commodities harvested in the EU (which include wood and cattle). Forest owners and farmers are simply required to prepare what amounts to a self-declaration that their operations are legal and deforestation-free. EU primary producers classed as “micro and small” with a turnover less than €10m (i.e. at least 99%) only need to submit this self-declaration once to the EUDR IT system. If they are already listed on a national database or are members of a forest association, they need not issue it at all. Nor do they need to provide plot-level geolocation data – only their postal address.
After meeting minimal self-declaration obligations, EU producers are issued with a “Due Diligence System Reference Number” that they can use in all subsequent transactions with their immediate buyers, the so-called “first downstream operators”. These operators – typically the primary processing mill or log exporter – must collect reference numbers and enter them into the IT system, but are not required to share them with their own customers. This means that there is effectively no meaningful traceability or due diligence obligation further downstream within the EU – including for all manufacturers, distributors, retailers and exporters of derivative products such as joinery, furniture or paper.
EU Origin Products Deemed “Legal and Deforestation-free”
The new guidance clarifies the requirements for “re-imports” of products into the EU. Any regulated commodity exported from the EU, such as European oak logs to China or Vietnam, can be returned to the EU as finished products by simply showing that it is sourced from the EU. As such, all products showing “EU origin” in the world market are presented as “legal and deforestation-free”, based on self-declarations, zero due diligence and zero internal traceability.
In its report, the EC claims to have reduced compliance costs by 75%, but this does not account for upstream operators outside the EU that are not directly responsible for compliance (e.g., submitting due diligence statements) but are nonetheless required to provide their EU customers with far-reaching due diligence and geolocation information.
Changes to EUDR Product Scope & IT System
The draft delegated act on EUDR Annex I proposes updates to the list of products in scope, but there are no significant changes in relation to forest products. Calls to remove wood residues, such as sawdust, wood chips and similar processing residues falling under HS 4401, from the legal scope have gone unheeded. A public consultation on the draft act closed on 1 June 2026.
The EUDR IT system also presents significant challenges. Due to serious concerns about its ability to cope with the volume of expected traffic once enforcement begins, it is currently undergoing a major overhaul. The system is not currently available to EU operators even for training purposes, and this is unlikely to change anytime soon. The draft implementing act on the IT system is now under review by EU member states. This act includes a simplified declaration for micro- and small primary operators placing products directly on the EU market, updated specifications for automated applications and other measures to improve user-friendliness. However, these measures only apply to operators with access to the IT system, which, in practice, is limited to EU persons and companies.
Opportunities for American Hardwood?
The American Hardwood Export Council’s solution to EUDR compliance is the American Hardwood Assured (“AHA”) Platform, developed with the financial support of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. This platform allows U.S. hardwood exporters to provide geolocation data at a county level with each consignment. AHEC believes this should enable U.S. hardwood exports to be considered compliant with the EUDR and to achieve the EUDR’s deforestation risk mitigation objectives.
While the EC’s latest report and guidance do little to directly change the AHA platform’s position in relation to EUDR, there are some potential new opportunities:
- The new Guidance reiterates that the only purpose of “simplified due diligence” that operators must apply to their purchases from low-risk countries is to ensure that the commodity was produced in that country and not mixed with material potentially from another country that is not low risk. The clear implication is that if provenance to a specific area – such as a county – in a low-risk country can be proved, there is no added value in providing plot level data and insisting on it is, by definition, disproportionate. It can surely only be a matter of time before the EC and EU regulators acknowledge this.
- The Guidance now states that operators sourcing from low-risk countries need not check the legality of each individual harvest operation, which implies they can rely on Jurisdictional Risk Assessments (JRAs), such as those produced by AHA. This is encouraging.
- The EC report mentions the intention to create repositories for legislation and certification schemes to facilitate implementation of EUDR Article 9 on data provision by operators. This offers an opportunity to ensure the comprehensive data contained within the AHA JRAs and the verification system itself are listed in these repositories, thereby achieving formal acknowledgement of their role in demonstrating EUDR compliance.
- The EC promises to launch a call for new members to join the EUDR Multi-Stakeholder Platform, which advises on EUDR implementation. AHA will seek more direct engagement in that Platform.
Political Engagement
AHA has been actively engaging with EU Member State authorities and with national and EU trade bodies to clarify its role in demonstrating EUDR compliance.
We take encouragement from recent feedback from a Ministry for the Environment, which acknowledged that the approach we are advocating (combining “area-based traceability” with “risk-assessed administrative units” to be legally facilitated by the simple removal of the reference to “single real-estate properties” in the “plot of land” definition) could be a better approach than the individual plot model the EU supports.
The main concern expressed by several stakeholders seems to be how to finesse the AHA county geolocation data to appear compliant with the plot-level requirement, without making fundamental changes to the EUDR or AHA.
It is frustrating that EU regulators continue to insist on applying technical specifications for appearances’ sake, despite evidence that they are unnecessary, and conflict with EU laws on proportionality and data protection, not to mention international trade obligations.
However, AHEC remains committed to securing recognition of the AHA platform for EUDR before enforcement begins at the end of this year and is pursuing three parallel strategies:
- We continue to engage with EU regulators to promote the strong technical and legal justification for AHA providing county-level instead of property-level geolocation data.
- We are collaborating with other forest industry associations in the U.S. to encourage unified political action to ensure the EU honors its commitment to “avoid undue impact on US-EU trade” resulting from EUDR, and recognizes the U.S. negligible risk status affirmed in the EU-U.S. Framework Trade Agreement.
- We are exploring technical solutions to help EU regulators accept AHA geolocation data as compliant, without requiring AHA users to collect additional data or encounter issues related to private property, privacy, commercial confidentiality, or data protection.
Although this presents a significant challenge, we continue to work diligently to secure EC acceptance of county location as meeting the objectives and requirements of the EUDR.