It’s official: the European Union Parliament has voted to exempt printed products, including books, journals, newspapers and magazines, from the updated European Union Deforestation Regulation act. The new vote also confirmed the decision to postpone the implementation of the regulations on other products for another year.
The goal of EUDR is to prevent forest degradation by mandating that only "deforestation-free" products can be sold in the European Economic Area. In exempting printed matter from the regulations, the Parliament determined that printed materials did not play a significant part in deforestation.
Initially, EUDR was set to go into effect at the start of 2025, but pushback from scores of industries had delayed implementation until 2026. To prepare for the implementation of EUDR, book and paper manufacturers spent countless hours debating how to meet the requirements as well as making significant financial investments to achieve those objectives.
