Bertelsmann Stiftung (Hrsg.)

Mitigating Burdens: Addressing the Impact of EU Sustainable Development Regulations on Neighbouring Countries

Ausgabeart
Broschur
Erscheinungstermin
23.06.2025
DOI
10.11586/2025047
Auflage
1. Auflage
Umfang/Format
20 Seiten, Broschur
Lieferstatus
Lieferbar

Preis

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Beschreibung

This policy brief investigates how the EU’s indirect-land-use-change (ILUC) rules—embedded in the Deforestation-Free Products Regulation (EUDR), the Renewable Energy Directive (RED II) and the earlier Timber Regulation (EUTR)—spill over into the EU’s neighbourhood. By tracing these provisions through the full regulatory pipeline, the authors show how a tool designed to curb global deforestation and promote cleaner energy at home increasingly shapes production patterns, land-use choices and trade incentives in the Western Balkans, Türkiye, the Eastern Partnership and the Southern Mediterranean.

Drawing on detailed UN Comtrade data, the paper maps those neighbourhood export lines—wood, rubber, cattle-derived products, palm and soya oils—that are most exposed to the new due-diligence and traceability demands. It finds sharp compliance cost spikes (up to €90 000 per operator), heightened “high-risk” country stigma, and a real danger that smallholders divert trade towards markets with looser standards. A Ukraine case study illustrates both the opportunity (filling the timber gap left by banned Russian/Belarusian wood) and the peril (pressure to log old-growth forests) that the EUDR creates. Existing Association and Free-Trade Agreements, meanwhile, lag behind the EU’s newer pacts with New Zealand or Vietnam in incorporating enforceable sustainable-development chapters.

To avoid pushing its neighbours further away, the brief recommends a three-pronged response: streamline and clarify ILUC implementation (especially geolocation reporting); invest in capacity-building, regulatory cooperation and data-sharing with partner authorities; and upgrade neighbourhood FTAs with deeper, enforceable sustainability clauses plus targeted tariff preferences for verifiably deforestation-free goods. Such steps, it argues, would soften the regulatory shock, safeguard vulnerable supply chains and keep the EU’s closest partners aligned with its green transition goals.

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