U.S. forest industry joint statement on EUDR simplification

Representatives of organisations representing the entire United States forest products supply chain from foresters and forest owners, logging contractors, wood, pulp, and paper manufacturers and exporters, have issued a joint statement calling for simplification of the EUDR to better ensure that it is proportionate to forestry operators in low-risk countries. Like AHA, the joint industry statement is calling for one targeted amendment to the text of the EUDR, removing the reference to “within a single real estate property” from the “plot of land” definition.

The Joint Statement emphasises that the U.S. forest products sector shares the Commission’s objective of preventing global deforestation and forest degradation and strongly supports policies that promote sustainable forest management worldwide. However, it also highlights that targeted simplifications for low-risk countries are necessary to strengthen the effectiveness, credibility, and proportionality of the EUDR, “ensuring it focuses resources where deforestation risk is greatest, while preserving stable access to sustainably sourced forest products for EU operators and consumers”.

The Joint statement notes how the December 2025 amendments to the EUDR substantially eased compliance obligations that are only available to EU-based downstream and small/micro players, thus creating a very unequal playing field for low-risk countries outside the EU.

“The EUDR framework, even as amended, continues to apply uniform and highly granular traceability and geolocation requirements to supply chains that are already demonstrably low risk. For U.S. forest products, this results in compliance obligations that are costly, operationally impractical, and disconnected from deforestation risk”.

The Statement points to the requirement for plot-level geolocation data - applied regardless of risk classification – as creating “an exponential increase in data volume for non-EU suppliers”. It highlights that a single shipment of forest products from the United States may be potentially sourced from thousands of individual plots of land, and a single container can require tens of thousands of geolocation data points, despite originating in a country with well-established forest governance and negligible deforestation risk.

The statement goes on to emphasise that these problems can be addressed through targeted, risk-based adjustments that preserve the EUDR’s core objective—preventing global deforestation—while eliminating unnecessary burdens for low-risk supply chains.

Specifically, the joint statement urges the Commission to amend Article 2(27) to remove the requirement for each of plot land to be “within a single real estate property” and to provide updated guidance to allow broader scale geolocation for forest products originating in countries already classified as low risk.

It is noted that a revised definition would still enable meaningful risk assessment while:

• Maintaining full alignment with the EUDR’s environmental intent
• Significantly reducing unnecessary administrative and compliance costs
• Lowering data volume pressure on the TRACES system
• Enabling proportional, risk-based traceability that reflects real deforestation risk
• Allowing flexibility to support small and micro-operators while preserving regulatory oversight

The Joint Statement can be downloaded here