The EU “governance through trade” regulatory model for the sustainable production and consumption of forest-risk commodities: the EUDR and the issues at stake in its implementation stage,

Last May 31, 2023 the EU legislators took a very courageous and important initiative towards reducing Union’s global deforestation “footprint” by completing the legislative process for the Regulation EUDR 1115/2023 – establishing a (trade-related) governance model for the sustainable production and consumption of deforestation-risk commodities and products and repealing Regulation EUTR 995/2010 on trade in timber and timber products – which entered into force on June 29, 2023. This article, drawing on the literature on unilateral (trade) measures with extraterritorial effects and on that on transnational forest governance, analyses the content of this relevant EU initiative; and discusses its overall significance as a quite innovative regulatory model, both per se – within the EU framework on global deforestation – and in terms of EU’s external (and extraterritorial) environmental action. It also identifies some shortcomings and intrinsic limits (of ambition and coherence) in the EU initiative that need to be accommodated (either through its secondary legislation or by its review mechanism) during the imminent implementation stage. This not only to be fully in line with EU’s environmental (and human rights ambition) and better coherent with WTO law; but also, to be "well fit" for start walking down the road of its actual implementation.