The European Commission has officially released its long-anticipated Country Benchmarking System, a classification list that rates countries by deforestation risk for the European Union Deforestation Regulation (EUDR).
The benchmark categorises countries into three tiers: low, standard and high risk. The leather industry continues to work on excluding bovine leather from Annex I – the list of commodities subjected to EUDR compliance. However, for now, the regulatory framework applies to bovine leather imports at every stage of processing.
Most countries have been classified as low risk, with just four marked as high risk – Russia, Belarus, North Korea and Myanmar. Meanwhile, several have been marked as standard risk, including Brazil and Paraguay.
For low-risk countries, due diligence will be simplified, with national authorities required to audit just 1% of operators. Standard risks countries will have more rigorous due diligence and authorities must inspect 3% of operators in this category. For high-risk countries, this goes up to 9%.
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