The EU Deforestation Regulation raises many practical questions for businesses that import commodities into the EU or trade regulated products within the single market. This FAQ addresses the most common questions we hear from importers and traders navigating EUDR compliance.
Yes, if you place regulated products on the EU market. The EUDR applies to any entity that first places a regulated commodity or derived product on the EU market, regardless of where that entity is incorporated. If your company is based in Switzerland, the United States, Brazil, or any other non-EU country, and you are the entity that introduces the product into the EU (for example, by being the declarant on the customs import declaration), you are considered an operator under the EUDR and must comply with all obligations, including conducting due diligence, collecting geolocation data, and submitting a Due Diligence Statement through the EU Information System.
The key factor is not where your company is located but whether you are the entity responsible for placing the product on the EU market. If your EU-based customer handles the import and customs declaration, they become the operator and bear the compliance burden. This is an important contractual and logistical decision that should be addressed explicitly in your commercial agreements.
The EUDR does not include a de minimis threshold based on the proportion of a regulated commodity in a product. If a product contains any amount of a regulated commodity and falls within the HS codes listed in Annex I of the regulation, it is within scope. For example, a cosmetic product containing a small percentage of palm oil, a chocolate bar with cocoa content, or a piece of furniture with a wooden frame — all are potentially within scope if their HS codes are covered.
The practical implication is that companies must carefully review the composition of their products and cross-reference the HS codes of all components against the EUDR Annex I list. Products that might not seem obviously connected to deforestation — such as printed materials (which contain wood-derived paper), leather goods (cattle-derived), or processed foods (containing soya or palm oil) — may still fall within scope.
Certifications can be a useful input to your risk assessment, but they are not sufficient on their own to demonstrate EUDR compliance. The regulation explicitly states that operators must conduct their own due diligence and cannot delegate this responsibility to certification bodies or rely solely on third-party verification schemes.
In practice, this means that even if your supplier holds a recognised sustainability certification, you must still independently verify that the product is deforestation-free and legally produced. You must still collect geolocation data for the production plots, verify deforestation-free status through satellite imagery or equivalent evidence, and submit a DDS through the EU Information System. Certifications may reduce the risk level in your assessment and provide supporting evidence, but they do not replace the core EUDR obligations.
If a supplier cannot provide the required geolocation data — precise coordinates for plots under four hectares or polygon boundaries for plots of four hectares or larger — you cannot complete your due diligence and therefore cannot submit a valid DDS for that product. Without a valid DDS, the product cannot legally be placed on the EU market.
This is one of the most significant operational challenges of the EUDR, particularly for supply chains involving large numbers of smallholder farmers in developing countries. Companies should begin engaging suppliers on geolocation data requirements as early as possible. Where suppliers lack the technical capacity to collect GPS data, operators may need to invest in supplier development programmes, provide GPS devices or mobile applications, or work with local cooperatives and aggregators to build data collection infrastructure. In some cases, companies may need to make difficult sourcing decisions — if a supplier fundamentally cannot provide geolocation data, continuing to source from them may not be viable under the EUDR.
Mixed-origin products — those containing commodities from multiple countries or regions of production — require geolocation data for every plot of land that contributed to the product. If you import a blend of coffee from three different countries, you must provide geolocation data for all production plots across all three countries. If you import chocolate made with cocoa from multiple cooperatives in different regions, every contributing plot must be documented.
The DDS allows you to list multiple countries of production and multiple sets of geolocation coordinates. However, the complexity of managing this data increases significantly with mixed-origin products. Companies that handle blended or mixed products should invest in robust traceability systems that can track the origin of each component through processing, blending, and shipping stages. Segregation of compliant and non-compliant sources at every stage of the supply chain is essential.
The European Commission is required to publish a country benchmarking system that classifies countries as low, standard, or high risk based on their deforestation rates, governance frameworks, and enforcement capacity. Until this benchmarking is published, all countries are treated as standard risk. This means that the standard level of due diligence applies to all products, regardless of their country of origin.
Once the benchmarking is published, the risk classification will affect two things: the intensity of your due diligence (simplified due diligence is available for products from low-risk countries) and the rate at which competent authorities check products from each risk category. Companies should monitor the Commission's announcements regarding the benchmarking timeline and be prepared to adjust their risk assessment methodologies once country classifications are available.
The EUDR requires that products are verified as deforestation-free — produced on land that was not deforested after 31 December 2020. Satellite imagery is the primary tool for this verification, but the regulation does not prescribe a specific methodology. You need to be able to demonstrate that the geolocation coordinates you provide correspond to land that has not been deforested since the cutoff date.
In practice, this means you need access to satellite data or analysis that covers every plot in your supply chain. For large-scale operations with thousands of plots, this typically requires a technology solution that can process satellite imagery at scale and provide automated deforestation-free verification. For smaller operations, manual analysis of publicly available satellite imagery (such as Copernicus Sentinel data) may be feasible, though it is time-intensive. The key requirement is that you can provide evidence of deforestation-free status if challenged by a competent authority.
Operators and traders must retain all documentation related to their EUDR compliance for a minimum of five years from the date the product was placed on the market or made available on the market. This includes:
These records must be made available to competent authorities upon request. Companies should ensure their document management systems can store, organise, and retrieve this information efficiently, particularly given the volume of geolocation and satellite data involved.
Each DDS covers a specific product or batch of products being placed on the EU market. Whether you can use a single DDS for multiple shipments depends on the circumstances. If multiple shipments contain the same product from the same production plots, produced during the same period, and covered by the same risk assessment, it may be possible to reference a single DDS. However, if the shipments differ in origin, composition, quantity, or production period, separate DDS submissions are likely required.
The practical approach is to align your DDS submissions with your commercial and logistics workflows. Many companies submit one DDS per shipment or per purchase order, as this provides the clearest traceability and simplifies record-keeping. The EU Information System's API capability is designed to support high-volume submission for companies that need to process many DDS efficiently.
If you become aware — through new information, a substantiated concern from a third party, or your own monitoring — that a product you have already placed on the EU market may not be compliant with the EUDR, you must take immediate action. The regulation requires operators to:
Failure to act on known non-compliance significantly increases the severity of potential penalties. Competent authorities are more likely to impose the maximum penalties on operators who were aware of non-compliance and failed to take corrective action than on those who made good-faith errors and responded promptly. Establishing an internal protocol for handling discovered non-compliance — including escalation procedures, communication templates, and decision-making authority — is an important part of your compliance framework.
Competent authorities conduct risk-based checks on operators and traders to verify EUDR compliance. The rate of checks is determined by the risk classification of the country of production: 9% of operators and quantities for high-risk countries, 3% for standard-risk countries, and 1% for low-risk countries. Checks can take several forms:
Checks can be triggered by risk-based selection, random sampling, or substantiated concerns submitted by third parties (including NGOs, civil society organisations, or other market participants).
This distinction is fundamental to understanding your obligations under the EUDR:
The practical implication is that the first entity to place a product on the EU market carries the heaviest compliance burden. Downstream traders have lighter obligations but are not exempt from responsibility — they must maintain traceability and act on any concerns about compliance.
Products that were legally placed on the EU market before the EUDR enforcement date (30 December 2026 for large operators) are not retroactively subject to EUDR requirements. However, any product placed on the market on or after the enforcement date must comply with the EUDR, regardless of when it was produced, shipped, or arrived in the EU. This means that products sitting in warehouses or in transit that have not yet been formally "placed on the market" (i.e., made available for distribution, consumption, or use on the EU market) will need to comply with the EUDR if they are first placed on the market after the enforcement date.
Companies should carefully plan their inventory and logistics to ensure that products intended for market placement after the enforcement date have the necessary DDS documentation in place.
The EUDR allows operators to authorise representatives to act on their behalf, including for the purpose of submitting DDS through the EU Information System. However, the legal responsibility for the accuracy and completeness of the DDS remains with the operator, not the representative. If you use a customs broker, compliance service provider, or other third party to submit your DDS, you must ensure that they have access to all the required information and that the submission accurately reflects your due diligence findings.
This is particularly relevant for non-EU companies that may prefer to work with EU-based representatives for practical reasons. The representative model can simplify the submission process, but it does not transfer liability. The operator must maintain oversight of the compliance process and verify the accuracy of all submissions made on their behalf.
Sources: This article draws on the European Commission's EUDR implementation guidance and the full text of Regulation (EU) 2023/1115.
See how Plotwiser's AI-powered solution handles your entire due diligence pipeline — from satellite verification to DDS generation.
