Ecologists in Action criticizes the autonomous communities for their slowness in implementing the European law against deforestation
- The environmental organization has for years developed an intense campaign to stop deforestation worldwide, caused by the expansion of the agricultural frontier in tropical and equatorial regions, the most biodiverse on the planet.
- For decades, the expansion of industrial monocultures in tropical and equatorial countries in America, Africa and Southeast Asia is causing very serious losses in forest extension, aggravating the climate and biodiversity crisis.
- Ecologists in Action frames the alarm about this situation in its campaign 'Without biodiversity there is no life'.
The European Deforestation Regulation (EUDR) aims to ensure that the European economy does not cause deforestation anywhere on the planet, as a European contribution to the fight against climate change and the biodiversity crisis. This regulation, approved in June 2023, must be fully applied as of December 30, 2024, and affects any commercial activity of the seven raw materials included so far: soybeans, palm oil, coffee, cocoa, rubber, wood and cattle. The EUDR obliges to guarantee the traceability of any batch of these seven products to its production plot, guaranteeing that it does not come from deforested areas and that it has been produced in accordance with national legislation.
In the Spanish State, the autonomous communities are responsible for the application of the EUDR. The legislation creates the obligation to assist operators (companies) in adapting to the standard, to establish annual control plans to verify the veracity of the Due Diligence Declarations presented by companies, to present regular reports to the public and the Commission and to apply corrective and/or sanctioning measures. To do this, they must have sufficient human, economic and technical resources to allow them to face this great challenge with guarantees.
Ecologistas en Acción has requested information from the 17 autonomous communities, and has held various meetings during June with some of those that represent a greater percentage of the consumption of raw materials affected by the EUDR, specifically with the Junta de Andalucía, the Xunta de Galicia and the Government of Aragon. The result is worrying. The vast majority of autonomous governments do not even have a technical unit capable of fulfilling their functions, and they have not provided any extra resources (with the exception of the Junta de Andalucía).
These delays are worrying and once again put Spain far behind other European countries such as the Netherlands, which already have an administrative unit with a strong budget and specific personnel, as well as work protocols.
It is true that the Spanish Government, specifically the Ministry for the Ecological Transition and the Demographic Challenge led by Teresa Ribera, must establish common communication protocols and bring to the Congress of Deputies a bill to approve the sanctioning procedure of the EUDR in Spain . But this delay by the ministry is no excuse for the autonomous communities to fail to comply with their legal obligations. The delays plus the obstacles that some business sectors are putting up can make it difficult to apply the regulation in a uniform and harmonized way in the EU, which would lead to failure in the objective of stopping deforestation.
