EU members call for revision of anti-deforestation law

A group of EU countries led by Austria is calling for urgent revisions to the bloc's anti-deforestation law set to go into effect at the end of the year, saying it could hurt European farmers, according to a document reviewed by Reuters on Monday.

The EU law aims to root deforestation out of supply chains for beef, soy and other agricultural products sold in Europe so that European consumers are not contributing to the destruction of global forests from the Amazon to Southeast Asia.

Those rules equally apply to European farmers, who will be banned from exporting products cultivated on deforested or degraded woodlands.

"The agreed overall objective of tackling deforestation in third countries must not be to the detriment of the European economy, in particular the European agriculture and forestry sector," said the document, which was also signed by Finland, Italy, Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia and Sweden.

EU leaders have in recent weeks watered down numerous environmental policies in an attempt to mitigate months of demonstrations by disgruntled farmers, some of whom have criticized the bloc's green policies as excessive.

EU countries' agriculture ministers are poised to discuss the document at a meeting in Brussels on Tuesday.

In the document, the EU countries said producers in low-risk nations – a category likely to include many EU members – should be exempt from requirements, while the burden of certifying products as deforestation-free should be "drastically reduced" within the EU.

As the law stands, farmers switching from conventional to organic methods, for example, may need to expand their area but would be discouraged from doing so in forest-rich EU nations, they said.

The EU information system for tracking compliance is not prepared to be implemented when the law is supposed to go into effect on December 30, the letter said.