Laundered Russian timber chips into EU as states search deforestation carve-outs

Suspect Russian and Belarusian wooden remains to be getting into the EU regardless of wartime sanctions, new information reveals, as a number of member states push to delay enforcement of the bloc’s anti-deforestation legislation.

In a letter despatched to the European Fee final week, EU member states together with Portugal, Estonia, Italy, Croatia, Slovenia, Czechia, Bulgaria, and Poland known as for exemptions from the EU Deforestation Regulation (EUDR), which is ready to take impact in December.

However new findings from NGO Earthsight present that many of those similar nations proceed to import birch plywood – a high-value wooden product – from China, Georgia, Kazakhstan, and Turkey. These origins have been beforehand linked to the laundering of Russian timber merchandise because the EU’s sanctions on Russia and Belarus following the previous’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 got here into impact.

Earthsight’s newest evaluation of latest commerce information till April 2025 builds on its earlier investigation, printed in January, which discovered EU nations had imported €1.5 billion price of Russian birch plywood because the begin of sanctions in 2022.

In March, the European Fee’s sanctions unit (DG FISMA) warned that Russian and Belarusian timber producers have been relabelling and rerouting by means of third nations to evade EU commerce restrictions.

Though Brussels imposed anti-dumping tariffs on Chinese language hardwood plywood in June, together with birch, NGOs argue the levy doesn’t distinguish between birch and lower-risk hardwood species, and will due to this fact fail to cease exports.

Between February and April this 12 months, Spain – which has not requested EUDR exemptions – was the EU’s prime importer of suspect birch plywood, with shipments price over €15 million in estimated retail worth, Earthsight discovered. Portugal adopted with greater than €12 million, whereas Estonia imported practically €10 million price, primarily from Kazakhstan.

Nevertheless, Poland – the most important importer between 2022 and 2024 – has since considerably stepped up checks, resulting in a pointy drop in imports from February this 12 months. Spain’s wooden and furnishings affiliation has warned that continued Russian imports threaten home trade, echoing comparable issues raised by producers in Latvia and Poland.

Eurostat information reviewed by Euractiv exhibits that previous to Russia’s 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine, EU imports of birch plywood from Kazakhstan and Georgia have been nonexistent, whereas imports from China and Turkey have been negligible in most member states.

Political momentum

The commerce revelations come as political stress mounts to weaken the EUDR – a flagship EU legislation aimed toward stopping merchandise linked to deforestation from getting into the only market.

Final week, the European Parliament adopted an EPP-led decision rejecting the Fee’s proposed threat classification and calling for a brand new “no-risk” class for nations with their very own deforestation legal guidelines.

Russia and Belarus are designated high-risk beneath the EUDR, however nations like Kazakhstan, China, Turkey, and Georgia – all flagged by NGOs – are presently categorised as low-risk, together with all EU member states.

Austrian MEP Thomas Waitz from the Greens group and a forester himself, warned that the no-risk class and a delay in implementation would undermine regime in opposition to Russia.

“The EPP wants to indicate up for Ukraine,” he mentioned, referring to the centre-right European Folks’s Occasion (EPP)

Pascal Canfin, the lead negotiator on the regulation for the liberal Renew group, mentioned calls to weaken the EUDR have been “a present to nations like Russia” and undermine EU sovereignty.

The EUDR contains stricter traceability guidelines than present timber legal guidelines and was designed to shut recognized loopholes. However Earthsight argues that the proposed “no threat” class – backed by 18 farming ministers and the European Parliament – may make EUDR even weaker than present guidelines.

EPP MEP Alexander Bernhuber, who leads the push to exempt some EU nations from EUDR obligations with the brand new threat class, mentioned the regulation shouldn’t be used to implement sanctions.

“[Circumvention] is already a prison offence that should be prosecuted with full pressure,” he advised Euractiv, including that what is required are “stricter controls on the EU’s exterior borders and enforcement of present sanction laws.”

“It can’t be the case that with the EUDR we punish those that apply sustainable and accountable forestry,” he added.

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