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starts being enforced, it "could have significant negative met for smooth implementation of the law” while keeping the
economic effects on both producers and consumers on both situation “under constant review”.
sides of the Atlantic", the letter said according to Argus Media.
"We therefore urge the EU Commission to delay the Mounting calls for EUDR delay from inside the EU

implementation of this regulation and subsequent enforcement Calls for a delay to implementation EUDR have become louder
of penalties" until the challenges have been addressed, it inside the EU itself in recent months.
added. The first signs of internal dissent came on 12 March in a
The letter follows on from an earlier letter sent to US trade letter sent to the EC signed by six European wood industry
representative Tai by 66 members of Congress in October organisations (CEI-Bois, EFIC, EOS, EPF, ETTF, and FEP).
last year. This letter requested that the trade representative This was followed on 13 March by a similar letter signed
raised the challenges that US paper and pulp producers by 19 wood trade organisations in France sent to the French
were facing due to the EU’s deforestation law with Brussels. Environment Minister.
“The EU’s regulation imposes impractical requirements that The calls for delay escalated in a meeting of the European

would unnecessarily restrict trade for products from low-risk Agriculture and Fisheries Council on 26 March when Agriculture
countries that have responsibly managed supply chains, such ministers from 20 of the EU's 27 member countries supported
as the US,” the congressional the letter said. a proposal by Austria to revise the law. The FT reports
The Financial Times (FT), in an article published 17 June that EU’s development commissioner Jutta Urpilainen and
confirming that the US government had sent a letter to the agriculture commissioner Janusz Wojciechowski have also
EC, noted that the EU imported about US$3.5 billion of both called for a delay EUDR in recent months.
American forest-based products in 2022. On 17 May, the German Bundesrat passed a motion

This included around US$2.2 billion of pulp and paper, on the EUDR “calling for an extended implementation and
US$0.7 billion of pellets, and US$0.6 billion of other wood to relieve producers of avoidable, additional bureaucracy
products. The FT noted that “US timber merchants have said where there is no demonstrable risk". The Bundesrat is the
they are considering cutting EU export contracts because they upper chamber of the German government where the Länder
cannot prove their paper does not come from deforested land”. (States) are represented.
A spokesperson for the American Forest and Paper The Bundesrat motion is explicit in its critique of the law
Association (AF&PA) told the FT that it was “impossible” for noting that “in view of the tight implementation period until
U.S. pulp and paper products to comply with the geolocation
requirements of the EUDR because these are made principally

from leftover sawmill and forest residue blended from different rawpixel.com
sources.
“This makes tracing each individual wood chip back to the
original forest plot of land effectively impossible. Additionally,
the technology needed to trace our fibre flow to comply with
this requirement does not currently exist,” AF&PA told the FT.
Euronews reported that, in responding to questions about

the EU’s reaction to the US letter, an EC spokesperson said
they had been “working hard to ensure all the conditions are