Deforestation: from 15 October 2026 the statement goes to the authority in the company’s country

Regulation (EU) 2023/1115 on the making available on the Union market and the export from the Union of certain commodities and products associated with deforestation and forest degradation is the act that decides, from 30 December 2026, on what conditions timber, furniture, paper, coffee, cocoa, soya, palm oil, rubber and beef may still be sold in the European Union. For Romania, where the timber, furniture and paper industries count thousands of companies and coffee and cocoa imports pass through a few dozen operators, the stake lies in the form, not in the principle: every consignment needs a statement submitted electronically, carrying a reference number that is passed on along the chain and to the customs authorities. On the same subject, Implementing Regulation (EU) 2026/826, which amends the phytosanitary certificate requirements on import for wood, plants and fruit, touches the same consignments.

The form and the system in which it is submitted are governed separately, by Implementing Regulation (EU) 2024/3084. That is the act amended by Implementing Regulation (EU) 2026/1565, adopted by the European Commission in Brussels on 13 July 2026 and published in the Official Journal of the European Union, L series, of 14 July 2026. The amendment was unavoidable: in December 2025, Regulation (EU) 2025/2650 had changed the basic regulation, introducing two new categories of addressee, „downstream operator” and „micro or small primary operator”, which the information system did not know.

The act entered into force on 17 July 2026, the third day following publication. A single provision was deferred, and that one starts to apply from 15 October 2026: Article 1, point (2)(c), which rewrites the rule on how due diligence statements are shared out among the national authorities. The reason for the deferral is written in the preamble, in recital (15): the system needed time for technical alignment with the new rule. The other fourteen points of Article 1, including point (d) of the same point 2, have applied since July.

What it changes in practice

The point that comes into play on 15 October 2026 replaces in full Article 2(3) of Implementing Regulation (EU) 2024/3084. The new provision has a single substantive sentence: in the information system, due diligence statements are attributed to the competent authorities of the Member State in which the operator is established. For operators established outside the Union, the statement goes to the authority of the Member State with which the operator is associated, according to the unique identifier provided in the system.

For a Romanian company this means two practical changes. First, its statements no longer go to the authority of the State through which the goods travel. A furniture maker in Suceava exporting through the port of Hamburg and a coffee roaster in Cluj importing green beans through Rotterdam will, from 15 October 2026, have their statements attributed to the authority in Romania, not to the German or the Dutch one. Second, the mirror image: statements from operators in other Member States who bring their goods in through Constanța, Giurgiu or Siret no longer reach the Romanian authority.

There is one more effect that the text does not announce but does produce. The old rule referred to the „information system user”, a notion which, under Article 3 of the same regulation, also covers authorised representatives. A Romanian company that had appointed a representative established in another Member State saw its statements attributed to the authority of the representative’s State. The new rule refers to the operator, so appointing a foreign representative no longer moves the competence.

The attribution of simplified declarations, added as a new paragraph (4) by point (d) of the same point, follows the same logic and has applied since 17 July 2026: the authority of the State in which the micro or small primary operator is established. If the information was entered in the system by a Member State from its own database, the declaration is attributed to the authority of that State.

Who falls into the category of small primary producers is set out in Regulation (EU) 2023/1115, in the form given to it by Regulation (EU) 2025/2650. Three conditions must be met cumulatively. The operator is a natural person, a micro undertaking or a small undertaking within the meaning of Article 3(1) and (2) of Directive 2013/34/EU, whatever its legal form, that is to say it does not exceed the limits of at least two of three criteria: for a micro undertaking, a balance sheet total of EUR 450,000, net turnover of EUR 900,000 and an average of 10 employees during the financial year; for a small undertaking, EUR 5,000,000, EUR 10,000,000 and 50 employees. It is established in a country classified as low risk under Article 29 of the regulation, and Romania is on the list in the annex to Implementing Regulation (EU) 2025/1093. And it places on the market or exports products that it has itself grown, harvested, obtained or reared on plots of land or, in the case of cattle, on establishments located in that country.

The last condition is the one that decides who is left outside. The simplification is for the primary producer, not for the trader. A forest owner in Vâlcea who sells the timber he has felled himself, a cattle farm in Teleorman or a soya grower in Timiș fall into the category if they pass the size test. A coffee importer, however small, does not, because he did not grow the beans. There is also a safety valve here for companies on the borderline: whoever exceeds the thresholds may stay in the category by showing that the parts of the balance sheet, of the turnover and of the number of employees that relate to relevant products do not exceed the limits of at least two of the three criteria.

For those who do fall inside, Article 4a inserted into the basic regulation removes three obligations: submitting a statement before every placing on the market or export, keeping records of the statements for five years, and the ban on placing on the market where the operator has failed to meet the reporting obligations. In their place there remains a single simplified declaration, submitted once before the first placing on the market and updatable after any major change. Its form, Annex III to the basic regulation, has four items: identification of the operator with the EORI number, the Harmonised System code with the description of the product and an estimated annual quantity, the country of production with the geolocation of the plots of land or their postal address, and the confirmation text. The due diligence statement, Annex II, has five: the same first three, but with the actual quantity of the consignment, plus the text and a signature block. The difference in volume lies in the frequency, not in the number of items: one a year instead of one per consignment.

The implementing regulation adds to this the mechanism under which the operator submits nothing. The new Article 4a of Implementing Regulation (EU) 2024/3084 requires the system to allow Member States to transmit the data in Annex III, where they already hold it in a database of their own, for each micro or small primary operator individually. The system assigns a declaration identifier and the Member State communicates it to the operator concerned. Romania holds registers containing part of this data, from land-area records to records of cattle holdings, so the route is open; but the transmission is a decision of the State, not a right the operator can claim.

The third novelty with a direct effect is the grouping of statements, through the new Article 8a. An operator may gather individual statements, due diligence statements or simplified declarations, into a new statement that refers to the reference numbers or the identifiers of the earlier ones, submitted by the operator himself or, for the same operator, by the authorised representative. The individual statements are assigned a status showing that they have been grouped and replaced, and from then on the number of the grouped statement is the one communicated to customers and to customs. Recital (7) says why: the statement files had reached the technical limits of the system and threatened to block customs procedures. For a furniture maker with hundreds of sawn timber entries a month, the difference is between one reference number and several hundred.

Finally, the new Article 15a answers the question of what happens when the system does not work. By 30 December 2026 the European Commission must publish on a publicly accessible website information on the availability and functioning of the system, plus the arrangements for unplanned unavailability longer than 60 minutes. Those arrangements must include at least two elements: notification by digital means of the authorities and of the Commission, as participants in the system, and the provision of a contingency reference number and a contingency declaration identifier covering the products for which, because of the outage, no statement can be submitted.

What has changed compared with the previous situation

Set beside the earlier form of Implementing Regulation (EU) 2024/3084, the amendment can be read point by point.

The attribution of due diligence statements. The old Article 2(3) had a two-step cascade. First: if the user provided information showing the Member State through which the product entered or left the Union market or, failing that, the place of entry or of making available on the market, the statement went to the authority of that State. Second, only if the first step gave no answer: the State in which the user was established, and for users outside the Union, the associated State. The new provision deletes the first step and keeps only the operator’s place of establishment. The cascade disappears, and with it the possibility that the same company deals with different authorities from one consignment to the next, depending on the route of the goods.

The system is no longer a module of the TRACES platform. In the earlier form, Article 2(1), point (a), gave the European Commission the task of developing the information system as a standalone module of the TRACES platform. Now only the task of developing the information system is left. Recital (6) explains it: the reference to the TRACES infrastructure limited operational flexibility. Nothing changes for the operator when submitting, but the only guarantee in the text that the system stays hosted where it is now has gone.

The block on amendments has narrowed in the operator’s favour. Until now, Article 5(2) prohibited amending and withdrawing a statement once it had been used as a reference by the same user or by another information system user. The new text keeps the prohibition only where the reference was made by the same user, with a view to grouping under Article 8a. A downstream customer who referred to its supplier’s statement no longer freezes, by that fact alone, the supplier’s right to correct it within the 72-hour window.

Rejecting a statement now has a deadline. The old Article 8(1) allowed the authority to reject a statement with no time limit at all, the only barrier being that the reference number had been made available. The rejection is now tied to the period laid down in Article 17(3) of Regulation (EU) 2023/1115, that is three working days, or 72 hours for perishable products, counted from the moment a high risk is identified in the system, with extensions of three working days each. For the operator, the uncertainty becomes measurable.

The delay of the reference number, however, has been left without a ceiling. In the earlier form, Article 7(3) said that the delay „may be extended further at the discretion of the competent authority”, with nothing more. The present wording is more explicit, but not stricter: the extension may be granted „for as long as necessary, by additional periods”, so that the authority can carry out the checks it needs. Clarity has increased, the maximum duration has not.

Wood species: the common name goes. Article 4(2), in its earlier form, required both the common names and the full scientific names of the species for products containing wood. Now only the scientific name is required, in full. For a Romanian sawn timber exporter, that is one column less to fill in on every statement.

One single account, with roles. The earlier form of Article 10(1) said only that registered users have access. Two things are now added: the user creates one single account, and within that same account may create different roles. On top of that, the new paragraph (4) requires the system to allow registration data to be updated, which was not provided for until now.

Suspension of access now has a written reason. Article 9, point (h), in its earlier form, provided for suspending and revoking access at the request of the competent authority, without saying on what grounds. The new text expressly adds „including to address cases of non-compliance with obligations” set out in the basic regulation or in the implementing one. The Romanian authority thus gains an explicit basis for asking that an operator be removed from the system, which in practice stops it from placing any further goods on the market.

The Commission may impose conditions of use. The new Article 15(4) allows it to specify the conditions for individual interactions with the system, including technical limits on file size and rules on the frequency of interactions, plus measures to prevent the transmission of incorrect, unnecessary or duplicate data. The authorities and the users are informed without delay of the measures taken. Until now, Article 15 contained no such power.

The national authorities enter the verification process. The amended Article 9 brings them three new things: the Commission asks them for assistance in cases requiring national expertise; it cooperates with them to verify the identification information provided by users and other information whose validity only the Member State can assess; and it develops, through the new point (ca), a function allowing them to manage users and to extract data about them. The regulation names no institution in Romania, because the designation is left to the Member State by Article 14(1) of Regulation (EU) 2023/1115, and the list of designations is published by the European Commission on its own website.

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