BRUSSELS -Commodities from just four countries will face the strictest checks under the European Union’s anti-deforestation law, with major forest nations including Brazil and Indonesia spared the toughest rules.
In a legal act published on Thursday, the European Commission said the law would categorise goods imported from Belarus, Myanmar, North Korea and Russia as a “high risk” of fuelling deforestation.
Countries including Brazil and Indonesia, which have historically been among the countries with the highest rates of deforestation, will be labelled as “standard risk” – which means they will face lighter compliance checks on goods exported to Europe.
The United States was among the countries labelled as “low-risk”, thus facing less stringent due diligence rules.
The EU law will apply to soy, beef, palm oil, wood, cocoa and coffee, and some derived products including leather, chocolate and furniture.
Companies in high risk and standard risk countries will need to show when and where the commodities were produced and “verifiable” information that they were not grown on land deforested after 2020.
A key difference between the groups is that EU countries will be required to carry out compliance checks covering 9% of companies exporting from countries with a high risk of deforestation, 3% from standard-risk countries and 1% for low-risk countries.
Failure to comply could result in fines of up to 4% of a company’s turnover in an EU member state.
(Reporting by Charlotte Van Campenhout and Kate Abnett, editing by Bart Meijer)
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