Somewhere in Brazil there is a field, and a cow is standing in it. She will become meat. Her skin will become leather. That leather will become a shoe, in a shop, in Berlin.
The European Union built a law around one question. What was that field before the cow? In a lot of places, the answer is forest. Formally it is the regulation on deforestation free products. Everybody calls it the EUDR. In September, it stopped asking that question about her skin.
The EU picked a date: Dec. 31, 2020. If land was cleared of forest after that date, the EU does not want what grew on it. Seven commodities are covered: cattle, cocoa, coffee, oil palm, rubber, soya and wood.
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But the commodity is not what decides whether the law reaches you. A list at the back does. Annex I. And it can be edited.
To comply you do not send a certificate. You file a due diligence statement carrying the coordinates of the plot of land, the way you drop a pin on a map. Any deforestation found on that plot disqualifies everything from it, automatically.
It does not matter where your company sits. It matters what is placed on the EU market, and the obligation sits with whoever places it there. For leather arriving from outside, that was the EU importer, not the supplier.
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