Operators and traders may deal with relevant products that contain or are made from other relevant products or relevant commodities. In practice these are sometimes referred to as ‘composite products’ although this is not a legal term used in the EUDR.
1 Answer
Anonymous User
The EUDR sets out rules to ensure that the relevant commodities and relevant products that are contained in a relevant product, or from which a relevant product is made, are properly identified during the operator’s due diligence. This is necessary to ensure that all relevant products are in compliance with the Regulation.
Operators need to meet the information requirements as part of their due diligence for the relevant products they are placing on or exporting from the market. It may in some cases be complex to identify the origin and geolocations of relevant commodities contained in relevant products, particularly for reconstituted products such as paper, fiberboard and particleboard, or highly processed products, such as food preparations containing cocoa, but this information is required for the products to be placed on the market or exported.
In addition, when placing on the Union market or exporting relevant products, if these contain or are made from other relevant products that had not been subject to due diligence before, then the operator must conduct due diligence on those parts of the relevant product. This applies to both SME and non-SME operators.
This means that operators need to collect information about the presence of relevant commodities within the relevant products that they are placing on the market or exporting. This includes to meet:
- the geolocation of all plots of land where the relevant commodities that the relevant product contains, or has been made using, were produced, and
- the date or time range of production.
Where a relevant product contains or has been made with relevant commodities produced on different plots of land, the geolocation of all the different plots of land needs to be provided. For relevant products that consist of or have been made from cattle, the geolocation requirement refers to all establishments associated with raising the cattle, encompassing the birthplace, farms where they were kept – in case of open-air farming, any environment or place, where livestock are kept, on a temporary or permanent basis-, and slaughterhouses.
If there is any deforestation or forest degradation on any of the plots of land that are identified for any of the relevant products within a relevant product that is a ‘composite product’ then that product cannot be placed or made available on the market or exported.
In addition, requires the common name and full scientific name of all species, for relevant products that contain or have been made using wood. It may be particularly difficult to identify all the species within each relevant component for composite products, such as paper and printed books. However, if the species of wood used to produce the product varies, the operator will have to provide a list of each species of wood that may have been used to produce the wood product. The species should be listed in accordance with internationally accepted timber nomenclature.