Berlin – The social partners of the German wood industry – the metal industry union (IG Metall) and the Main Association of the German Wood Industry and Plastics Processing Industry (HDH) – are making a joint appeal to the federal government and are calling for the planned EU Deforestation Regulation (EUDR) to be de-bureaucratized.
In the letter to Chancellor Friedrich Merz, the social partners IG Metall and HDH warn of production interruptions and further job losses if the regulation is implemented without fundamental adjustments by December 30, 2025. HDH and IG Metall support the EUDR’s goal of effectively combating global deforestation, the causes of which lie predominantly in industrial agriculture outside Europe. This makes it all the more important to have regulation that is targeted and does not create unnecessary bureaucracy in countries where there is no deforestation. But according to the planned regulation, producers and all downstream companies would have to keep individual records of all the wood used.
IG Metall board member Nadine Boguslawski explains: “Environmental and climate protection are also in the interests of employees. For this we need practical and implementable rules and less bureaucracy. The latter does not help forests or employment.”
HDH President Johannes Schwoerer explains: “The wood industry is already in an economically tense situation. Many companies are struggling with a decline in orders, high energy and material costs as well as a persistent investment backlog. The EUDR exacerbates this situation significantly, because companies that are already under a lot of pressure now have to spend a lot of money to implement the regulation. In addition, two thirds of small and medium-sized companies are currently unable to implement it – they run the risk of being excluded from the market by the deadline.”
Without a functioning digital infrastructure and without practical implementation solutions, there is a risk of production stops, short-time work and further job losses. The social partners also warn of noticeable effects on consumers in Germany and Europe, for example through the declining availability of wood products.
That is why HDH and IG Metall are in favor of a substantial simplification of the regulation within Europe and appeal to the federal government to work for a practical solution that limits documentation and due diligence obligations to the initial distributors, relieves the burden on companies in the downstream chain and monitors global deforestation via satellite, not through bureaucracy.
Background: The EUDR requires all market participants to fully record and report the origin data of wood products in an EU database. According to the European Commission, the technical and organizational implementation will hardly be possible by the turn of the year. A company survey conducted by HDH also showed that two thirds of small and medium-sized companies were unable to implement the EUDR by the deadline.
Even taking into account the EU Commission’s new proposal, the regulation remains very bureaucratic, incomprehensible and also imposes a documentation obligation on all companies that do not purchase any products from high-risk countries, but mainly trade regionally.
You can find the joint appeal of the social partners here as a download.