Led by Manuel Rios (INPELSA, Spain), Fabrizio Nuti (Nuti-Ivo, Italy), and Jean Christophe Muller (Tanneries Haas, France), delegates from UNIC (Italy), ACEXPIEL (Spain), FFTM (France), VDL (Germany), LeatherUK (UK), and APIC (Portugal) welcomed the European Commission’s decision to postpone the implementation of the EU Regulation on Deforestation-Free Supply Chains (EUDR) by one year.
COTANCE urged the Commission to use this postponement to revise the scope of the Regulation and remove hides and leather. Referring to a study by the Sant’Anna Institute of Pisa University, it emphasized that leather is not a driver of deforestation and therefore should never have been included.
EU Commissioner Jessika Roswall highlighted that the necessary IT systems are not yet ready, justifying the postponement. Industry representatives call for this time to be used to simplify the EUDR and exclude leather from its annex.
