Those who work in the rubber sector, and perhaps are also readers of Pneurama, might have noticed that apart from some news that we have been able to give on our website, this year we have not yet written anything on the European Regulation on deforestation EUDR (Reg. 2023/1115), created with the aim of preventing the phenomenon of deforestation in all countries producing certain raw materials, including natural rubber, and which should soon closely concern many players in our supply chain, with a series of new obligations and procedures for companies applicable to large and medium-sized enterprises from 30 December 2024, and to micro and small enterprises from 30 June 2025.
Even tire dealers, where they purchase tires or other rubber items directly from abroad for their commercial activities, will be required to follow these procedures, as importers of rubber or items containing rubber.
After many of the parties involved protested for months against the impossibility of clearly understanding the activities to be implemented, against the major delays and inefficiencies of the central IT system that will have to manage the practices required by the regulation, against the difficulty of interpreting some aspects of an extremely detailed and complex regulation, and against the presence of some contradictions that have not yet been clarified, the European Commission has proposed to postpone the effective application of the EUDR Regulation by 12 months. The European Council has already expressed its approval of this postponement proposal on October 16th. As this issue of Pneurama goes to press, as far as we know, there are about two weeks before the plenary session of the European Parliament which will decide on the postponement proposal takes place. Unfortunately, despite having really tried to follow the progress on this very complex and important European regulation, this little information is, in extreme synthesis, all we have been able to write about it - so serious was the confusion on this matter. There have been significant delays in activating the test platform, in issuing the guidelines for the regulation interpretation, in disseminating responses to the many players in European industry who have long sought clarity: in such an uncertain framework, the market today also finds itself divided between those who have tried in vain to understand and adapt to the new procedures envisaged, and the larger and more structured entities, which thanks to huge investments have already equipped themselves for the new procedures, and today are asking for the initial timing to be respected, after the efforts made to adapt to them.
Whatever the choice of the European Parliament on the extension proposal, what everyone agrees on is the fact that the European institutions have rightly been ambitious in the objectives and scope of this regulation, but that unfortunately the method adopted was not the most suitable to put it into practice, and it is not just a question of timing: the real "design flaw" that emerges is rather the poor involvement of the various sectors involved, whose contribution perhaps would also have served to accelerate all those aspects that today are significantly delayed. But as they say, it's never too late to do the right thing.
