The European Commission advised on October 21 that the European Union Deforestation Regulation (EUDR) will take effect as planned. Large and medium-sized companies must comply by December 30, 2025, while smaller operators follow in December 2026. Instead of a delay, the EU will simplify reporting obligations and offer a six-month leniency period in 2026.
According to the official EU press release (IP/25/2464), the EU Commission has now proposed a simplified reporting and compliance model. https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_25_2464
The new relevant dates are now as follows:
December 30, 2025 – Enforcement begins for large and medium-sized operators and traders. These include most EU importers, major distributors, and established suppliers that place regulated products on the EU market.
December 30, 2026 – Compliance begins for micro and small enterprises. The six-month delay for smaller operators aims to give them additional time to adjust internal processes and establish traceability systems.
To further ease the transition, the Commission has introduced a leniency period. For the first half of 2026, companies will not face penalties for incomplete or delayed declarations, provided they demonstrate good-faith efforts to comply.
This period is not a suspension of the legislation, just a buffer to fine-tune systems and data pipelines before full enforcement.
Friesens continues to work with our suppliers (paper merchants and paper mills) to ensure that the required EUDR information/data will be available.
Please note that some paper mills will not be providing EUDR information/data until the end of December 2025. We expect that this could impact some titles/books that are produced prior to that time and planned by Publishers to ship those books to Europe.
However, if EUDR information/data is not required for titles/books imported into the EU in Q1 and Q2 2026, then this will not impact the importation of such titles/books.
We are awaiting further clarification regarding what will required for books imported into the EU prior to June 30, 2026. Friesens will be ready to provide EUDR information/data to customers as long as the mills provide the information/data.
*credit for some of this content to EAS: https://easproject.com
