Chocolate makers Nestle, Mars Wrigley, and Ferrero have written to the European Commission to defend the EU’s anti-deforestation regulation amid calls to delay and revise the legislation to reduce bureaucracy for small farmers.

The EU regulation on deforestation-free products was adopted in June last year and requires companies to prove their products have not contributed to deforestation before they can be placed on the EU market.

The law, which starts applying on Dec. 30 this year, targets agricultural commodities like wood, cocoa, soy, palm oil, coffee, rubber, and derived products like leather, chocolate, tyres, or furniture.

But the US government and industry groups like the Confederation of European Paper Industries have called for the regulation to be delayed, saying the EU’s system for managing compliance is not ready yet.

Now, big chocolate manufacturers are coming out in defence of the regulation, news agency Reuters reported on Wednesday.

In a paper sent to EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, food giants Nestle, M&Ms maker Mars Wrigley, and chocolate firm Ferrero backed the law, urging the EU to do more to help companies meet its December start date.

“The EUDR (EU Deforestation Regulation) represents an important step forward in driving the necessary transformation of the cocoa and chocolate sector, by helping to minimise the risk of deforestation associated with cocoa and chocolate products placed on the EU market,” says the paper, seen by Reuters.

The joint paper advocates for the creation of a standing committee to assist with the implementation of the new rules, saying that signatory companies “have supported the EU Regulation on Deforestation-free Products (EUDR) and are committed to its successful implementation”.

Global Witness, an international NGO, hailed the move by the three chocolate makers.

“Some companies appear ready to comply with the new law,” the charity said in a statement, which cites Ferrero’s vice-president for EU institutional relations, Francesco Tramontin.

“This is similar to food and safety regulation in the 90s. It may look heavy at the beginning from an administrative perspective – but it needs to be done,” Tramontin says in the release.

According to Global Witness, delaying the EU’s anti-deforestation regulation by two years would expose the EU to 300,769 hectares of deforestation, the equivalent of an estimated 120 million tonnes of CO2, or 376 million long-haul flights.

‘BUREAUCRATIC MONSTER’

But if large food companies can afford to implement the EUDR, this is not the case for smallholders in developing countries, according to Peter Liese, a German lawmaker who is the environment spokesperson for the centre-right European People’s Party (EPP) in the European Parliament.

In an interview with Carbon Pulse last month, the German MEP called the EUDR a “bureaucratic monster” that is “technically completely impossible” to implement, particularly for smallholders.

“It needs to be changed,” Liese insisted, saying the regulation must first be delayed before the Dec. 30 start date kicks in.

Liese, who is from the same party as Commission President von der Leyen, later issued a statement saying he fully supports the objectives of the EUDR and that Europe must take its responsibility seriously.

However, he added that the regulation must be adapted to suit the constraints of small farmers and forest owners who lack the administrative capacity of big multinational companies.

“Many small farmers around the world and even small forest owners in the European Union cannot work with the text,” Liese said.

Six EU member states – Austria, Finland, Italy, Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia, and Sweden – are also seeking to delay the implementation of the anti-deforestation law, and exempt smallholders from the rules, which start applying to small-scale farms as of June 30, 2025, according to news website Euractiv.

The European Commission acknowledges those concerns and is currently looking at short-term fixes to the EUDR to make it workable for the EU’s trade partners.

Officials in the Commission’s directorates for trade (DG Trade) and the environment (DG Environment) are currently engaged with EU trade partners “to see how to make this workable”, said Sabine Weyand, director general at the European Commission’s trade department.

“We have countries in Central America who tell us people will turn to cocaine” production if they can no longer sell their products to the EU, Weyand told an online event earlier this month.

The Commission is “trying to fix this now during the implementation period”, she said.

By Frédéric Simon – fred@carbon-pulse.com

** Click here to sign up to our twice-weekly biodiversity newsletter **