Human Rights Watch on Thursday urged the European Commission to revise the text of its anti-deforestation regulation, scheduled for implementation by the end of 2026, after critics condemned the legislation for its potentially devastating exclusion of leather, a key driver of forest destruction.

Commenting on the unforeseeable consequences that may arise due to the exclusion of leather, Luciana Téllez Chávez, senior environment researcher at Human Rights Watch, stated: ‘It is hard to overstate the transformative effect that the prospect of the regulation has had in hotspots for deforestation and rights abuses…For this momentum to continue, we need to see robust implementation and no unjustifiable exclusions.’

The EU Deforestation Regulation (EUDR), which was adopted in 2023, aimed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and biodiversity loss by increasing the usage of ‘deforestation-free’ products and by tightening supply chain due diligence requirements for companies placing commodities such as cattle, coffee, and soya on the EU market. Under the regulation, companies are mandated to provide accurate geo-location coordinates, which include the latitude and longitude of the area where the commodities were produced, to authorities.

The Regulation also ensured that operators and traders trying to sell their products will be subjected to routine checks, with non-compliance resulting in fines of at least 4% of annual EU turnover, confiscation of their goods, and temporary bans. Three years on since its implementation, statistics have illustrated that the Regulation has been highly effective, with it being projected to reduce EU-driven deforestation by 29% by the year 2030. In terms of assessing the traceability of specific commodities, the Regulation has been particularly successful, with approximately 50% of global cocoa already geolocated.

Nonetheless, significant practical and logistical hurdles still remain in geolocating soy, despite current high-resolution models being able to identify its origin to within 192 kilometres. The Regulation has since been amended twice, the first being in December 2024 and the second in December 2025. During those amendments, the EU sought to make the measures easier for businesses to comply with, with the next deadline for compliance being in December 2026.

Meaningful change in regions with tropical forests is certainly visible, with the state of Sarawak in Malaysian Borneo introducing a moratorium on new permits for oil palm plantations, after external pressure from the EU.  For instance, government officials in the state of Pará, Brazil, stated that the introduction of the first individual cattle traceability system in the Amazon was due to its desire to stifle competition from Asian and EU countries. 

In early May, the Commission announced a public consultation regarding a draft law that would alter the list of products covered by the regulation, planning to exclude leather, a decision that has been deemed inconsistent, as it would block beef from cattle raised on illegally deforested land from the EU market while allowing their leather to enter freely. Cattle ranching remains the primary driver of deforestation globally, and the long-term effects of this legislation, once it is passed, remain to be seen.