Wooden stirrers used for a cup of coffee, newly purchased furniture, even chocolate — many of the products we use in daily life originate from forests. But what if, because of these products, forests somewhere on Earth are disappearing? The EU Regulation on Deforestation-free Products (EUDR), which the EU is implementing in earnest from December 2025, is precisely a regulation to solve this problem. According to the World Wide Fund for Nature, approximately 40% of the world’s forests have already been degraded by human activity, and 10 million hectares of forest are lost each year. That is about 16 times the area of Seoul disappearing every year. This is why the EU created the EUDR, a regulation requiring proof that products entering the EU market were not produced through the destruction of forests.
[EU Regulation on Deforestation-free Products (EUDR) Ⓟ ESG.ONL/ESG Today]
Under the EUDR, operators wishing to distribute seven commodities — cattle, cocoa, coffee, palm oil, soy, rubber, and timber — and their derivative products within the EU must submit a due diligence report verifying that the production process is unrelated to deforestation and forest degradation. The same regulation applies not only to raw materials but also to derivative products made from them.
The EU has classified the countries subject to the regulation into three grades based on risk level by country. According to the country risk classification published in May 2025, 140 countries including South Korea were classified as low-risk; Brazil, Indonesia, and Malaysia among others as standard-risk; and North Korea, Russia, Belarus, and Myanmar as high-risk. The classification standard is the degree of deforestation — the conversion of forests to agricultural land. Based on this standard, only 1% of the annual total volume of products produced in countries classified as low-risk are subject to inspection, and importers within the EU are subject to simplified due diligence obligations, such as being exempt from implementing risk assessments or mitigation measures. For standard-risk countries, 3% are subject to inspection, and for high-risk countries, 9%.
For companies to respond to the EUDR, strengthening supply chain management is necessary. Transparency across the overall production system, including manufacturing and processing processes, must be secured by providing information such as the geographical location of all production stages, production dates, supply chain contacts, satellite images or land use maps, and land ownership or logging permits.
The application of a new system entails some degree of inconvenience. But going forward, the products we use will come with an invisible guarantee that ‘this product did not destroy forests.’
by Editor O