Joint COCERAL, FEDIOL and FEFAC statement: The EUDR Simplification Package is Insufficient to Deliver Legal Certainty
Joint COCERAL, FEDIOL and FEFAC statement:
The EUDR Simplification Package is Insufficient to Deliver Legal Certainty
COCERAL, FEDIOL and FEFAC, representing the EU trade in cereals, oilseeds, oils and fats and animal feed, the EU vegetable oils and protein meal industry, and the EU compound feed and premix industry, regret that the EUDR Simplification Package falls short of delivering real simplifications and does not improve legal certainty for companies.
As already announced by the Commission, the Simplification Package did not include a proposal for a legislative amendment, which remains the only means to deliver real and legal simplifications and fix inconsistencies, complexities, and ambiguities in the legislation. While the Commission has made efforts to provide simplified and flexible interpretations of ambiguous and constraining or unworkable provisions through FAQs and guidance, these do not have the legal value required to ensure legal certainty and homogeneous enforcement by competent authorities. We also note that the attempted simplification of obligations downstream in last year’s amendment to the EUDR has not delivered the expected simplification in practice and leads to inconsistencies due to the dual role of companies, while customers remain concerned about their liability.
We are convinced that a targeted amendment of the EUDR is necessary. FAQs and guidance can only propose marginal new interpretations of the same inconsistent, complex and ambiguous provisions. They leave operators with high uncertainty about their compliance and expose them to possible severe penalties. This Simplification Package fails to provide legal certainty and to resolve the risk of supply disruption. We therefore call on the Commission to reconsider its stance on the need for a targeted amendment with limited legal corrections of the EUDR, and are ready to cooperate closely to signal the remaining obstacles to clear, coherent, and workable rules for compliance.
Furthermore, we also reiterate our concerns with the Information System and its artificial limitations. A significant number of problems linked to the design of the Information System remain unaddressed, such as the 25 MB limit, the limited possibility to group due diligence statements (to one level), and the insufficient timeframe (72 hours) for amending a due diligence statement.