Law’s original author points to removal of obligations for downstream traders to verify origin of commodities
It was hailed by campaigners around the world as a game-changing piece of legislation that would help stop deforestation.
But when a bullet-ridden version of the EU’s deforestation regulation, once supposed to be the crown of the Green Deal, finally limped across the legislative line this month, not even its architect was smiling, and one politician said it had been pretty much “dismantled”.
Hugo Schally, the law’s original author who has since retired from the European Commission, told the Guardian he believed it had been “hollowed out” by the removal of obligations on downstream traders to verify the origin of commodities such as palm oil, soy, wood, beef, rubber, cocoa and coffee.
“There now will be fewer actors with direct obligations, fewer data points along the value chain and less precise origin data, which will make enforcement and eventual prosecution more difficult,” he said.
