EUDR Compliance: Key Updates and How to Prepare Your Timber Company for 2026

The EU Deforestation Regulation (EUDR) has been officially postponed: the application date has been moved to 30 December 2026 for most operators and traders. For micro and small enterprises, the deadline is extended to 30 June 2027.

This postponement is not an exemption. It is extra time to prepare. Companies that do not make the most of this margin will reach 2027 with the same problems they had in 2024: incomplete traceability, scattered data and exposure to penalties.

What has changed with the postponement

The European Commission approved the postponement at the end of 2024 following pressure from several member states and industry associations, which warned of a lack of technical and institutional readiness. The most relevant changes affect:

Application date

• Large operators and non-SME traders: 30 December 2026
• Micro and small enterprises: 30 June 2027

Intermediate (downstream) operators

Operators that are not direct producers (that is, those who buy already processed timber and sell it to other operators or incorporate it into final products) have a new and significant obligation: to register in the EU information system before placing regulated products on the market. This registration is not voluntary: without it, it is not possible to submit valid due diligence statements.

Unified Simplified Declaration for small producers

To make compliance easier for private forest owners with a low volume of operations, the regulation provides for the possibility of submitting a Unified Simplified Declaration. This option allows several operations to be grouped into a single declaration, reducing the administrative burden when origins are clearly documented.

Geolocation: alternative for small plots

One of the biggest sources of friction in the EUDR was the requirement for GPS coordinates for every harvesting point. The revised text allows, for plots of less than four hectares, the use of the postal address or the cadastral reference instead of a georeferenced polygon. This flexibility eases the pressure on owners and managers of small forests, although it does not remove the obligation to document the origin.

What does not change: the obligations that remain

The postponement does not affect the core obligations of the regulation. Companies must understand that the preparation work cannot be put off indefinitely.

Record keeping: 5 years

All documentation related to due diligence (contracts, delivery notes, transport waybills, weighing tickets, origin coordinates, risk assessments) must be kept for five years from the date of the declaration. This means that data on 2026 operations will have to be available until 2031.

Audit rates by risk level

The competent authorities of each member state are required to carry out checks on operators. The minimum percentages set by the regulation are:

• 3% of operators in countries or areas classified as standard risk
• 9% of operators in countries or areas classified as high risk

These percentages are not indicative: they are minimum thresholds. In practice, companies with incomplete documentation or poor management systems face a real risk of being inspected and penalized.

Penalties proportionate to the damage

The penalties provided for by the EUDR include fines of at least 4% of the infringing operator’s annual EU turnover, confiscation of the products and temporary exclusion from public procurement procedures. These are not symbolic fines.

Why digitalization is a practical necessity

The volume of information required by the EUDR (coordinates, documents, dates, declarations, batch references) makes it materially impossible to manage manually for any company with a significant volume of operations.

A company working with ten forest owners, three carriers and two different industrial destinations can generate several hundred records per month. Managing that with paper or spreadsheets is not only inefficient: it is unworkable when an inspection arrives and you have to demonstrate the traceability chain immediately.

Digitalization is not an optional improvement: it is the only real compliance mechanism for the sector.

How Nemus prepares your company for the EUDR

Nemus is the platform designed specifically for the forestry sector that lets you comply with the EUDR without adding extra administrative burden to your day-to-day operations.

• Georeferencing from the field: the Trucker® app lets you record the harvesting point at the time of loading, without depending on office work afterwards.
• Automatic generation of EUDR codes: based on the data already recorded in the platform, with no additional manual entry.
• Simplified declarations: support for the Unified Simplified Declaration option where it applies.
• Centralized archive: all documentation (contracts, delivery notes, weighing tickets) accessible and kept for the legally required period.
• Support for PEFC, FSC and SURE certifications: all the documentation needed for audits in a single place.

The result is a company that reaches the deadline with its data in order, not with a backlog of pending work.

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If you want to know exactly which obligations apply to your company and how Nemus can help you meet them, request a free session with our EUDR expert.