The European Union (EU) anti-deforestation regulation EUDR affects thousands of Estonian companies: in addition to the entire forestry and wood industry, also larger and smaller food producers, retail chains, furniture companies, and others who sell or produce anything that contains cocoa, coffee, rubber, palm oil, wood, soy, or beef.
Mait Mäesalu — 2025-11-08 (5 minute read)
Although the regulation entered into force already in 2023, its implementation by the EU has been repeatedly postponed. It is now clear, however, that the regulation will apply from 01.2026, which means it is the last moment for companies to start acting: understanding the requirements and getting processes in place takes time.
The aim of the EUDR, short for European Union Regulation on Deforestation-Free Products, is to reduce the deforestation of the world’s forests caused by EU consumption. According to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, deforestation is one of the main drivers of biodiversity loss and climate change. If appropriate legal measures are not implemented, consumption and production in the EU of beef, cocoa, coffee, palm oil, soy, rubber and wood alone could increase deforestation to an estimated 248 000 hectares per year by 2030.
Therefore, the EU decided that products whose raw materials come from areas that have been deforested after 31 December 2020 may not be placed on the market. This requirement applies both to EU companies and to importers from third countries and covers seven commodities and products made from them, such as leather goods, wooden furniture, chocolate, and more.
For micro and small enterprises with annual turnover below 10 million euros and fewer than 50 employees, the deadline will apply six months later, meaning with the extension it may shift to mid-2027. This gives companies some relief — especially those who until now did not even know such far-reaching proof requirements were coming.
Representatives of the Ministry of Regional Affairs and Agriculture have confirmed that work is also underway in parallel to simplify the regulation, but how these changes will look in practice is not yet clear. Unlike a directive, where Member States can decide how to implement it in their own laws, a regulation applies directly in all EU countries. Member States can decide only how supervision is carried out and what penalties are imposed in case of violations.
Despite the possible extension, it may still happen that when cooperating with larger companies (for example, selling them your production), a situation arises where the larger companies, to mitigate their own risks, require compliance from their partners as well.
The EUDR brings extensive bureaucracy for companies. The origin of raw materials must be collected with GPS-coordinate accuracy, risk assessments must be prepared, and the data must be submitted in the TRACES system. While it was initially estimated that about 100 million declarations would be created annually, it is now clear that the actual volume may be ten times higher.
Due diligence applies at every stage of the supply chain; thus, in the case of beef, the regulation concerns those who import the commodity to the EU market, those who produce sausages from that meat, and those who sell that sausage or beef in their store. SMEs may be exempt from obligations in certain cases, but if they want to import themselves, a declaration must also be submitted. Traders must know from whom they bought and to whom they sold, and keep the declaration numbers for five years.
And the higher-risk the country from which the raw material originates, the more detailed a declaration the EUDR requires. The European Commission has divided countries into three groups according to risk levels. There are over a hundred low-risk countries in total, including all European Union countries. There are four high-risk countries: Belarus, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, Myanmar and Russia. The remaining countries fall into the medium-risk group.
Estonia’s forestry and wood industry sector is already partially ready for the EUDR. Under the leadership of the Ministry of Climate, a tool is being created to help all Estonian forest owners meet the requirement. With it, one can select the necessary forest notifications in the forest register, on the basis of which a pre-filled EUDR due-diligence form is generated in the system that can be sent automatically to the European environment.
Based on conversations with other companies affected by the EUDR — such as food producers, farmers and retailers — it can be said that most do not know how they will comply with this regulation.
Last year, together with the Environment Agency, we created a digital reporting prototype that enables Estonia’s wood sector to meet the obligations arising from the regulation more easily: the solution combines various local forest data and, when completing the e-waybill, immediately moves them to the European reporting system EU TRACES.
By now, the prototype created for the pilot has been further developed and a digital solution called EUDRIS (eudris.com) has emerged, which is usable by other sectors and companies of different sizes. The solution completed in the spring has by now been tested by a couple of dozen Estonian companies or institutions, among them representatives and associations of the wood industry as well as non-sector companies. Experience so far has shown that the solution provides significant time savings thanks to the automation of data entry and the reduction of manual work. Thus, there is already at least one working solution on the market that can be adopted across sectors.
Although the regulation brings a huge amount of new paperwork, it may actually turn into an opportunity for many Estonian companies. Those who can make their supply chains transparent today and get digital solutions up and running may tomorrow win trust both at home and internationally. The EUDR need not be only a burden of bureaucracy but rather a new mark of quality that helps Estonian products stand out and open doors to markets where responsible production has already become the norm.
Simplify or automate your EUDR application today. EUDRIS is an agent between you and the EU TRACES environment to simplify applying for EUDR codes and to prove the origin of your products.
We have long worked closely with Estonia’s forest sector. We know that Estonia’s forest data are highly digitized. We anticipated that companies would need help complying with the EUDR requirements and that data-driven reporting could be faster and simpler. I believe that cooperation between the private and public sectors is especially important in the current economically challenging times. The solution created as a pilot is available free of charge to everyone, including the food industry and other sectors that must demonstrate compliance with the EUDR requirements.
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