Credits: Jon Andersson
The omnibus reaps yet another victim: forests and their protections against the endless consumption of pulp and paper.
2025 December 5th – Yesterday, the Council of the EU, the European Parliament and the European Commission decided to pass a blank check to the pulp and paper sector. In yesterday’s trilogue meetings on the reopened European Union Deforestation Regulation (EUDR), all parties agreed to remove a single line of products from its scope: printed books, newspapers, pictures and other products of the printing industry, manuscripts, typescripts and plans of paper (ex 49 in Annex I). This is the result of the Omnibus deregulation process, which exempts more sectors from the required due diligence against deforestation and human rights violations.
“The omnibus reaps yet another victim: forests and their protection against the endless consumption of pulp and paper”, says Mateus Carvalho, Consumption Reduction campaigner at the Environmental Paper Network International.
The Environmental Paper Network International (EPN) denounces this unacceptable U-turn from the EU on the inclusion of books and newspapers in EUDR: the only category of paper products included in the scope of the regulation is now the only one being rolled back. The paper industry already benefited from an unfair advantage of EUDR architecture: when a product is imported, its paper-based packaging does not fall under the EUDR scope. This way, deforestation fibre could be ‘legally’ smuggled into the EU. “Now they remove books and newspapers?” questions Sergio Baffoni, senior campaigner at EPN, “It sets an incredibly dangerous precedent for EUDR and other regulations”.
EPN is alarmed by the volatility and uncertainty that European environmental regulation is currently facing, raising the question of the credibility and stability of the EU policy-making process. EPN shares the EU’s Ombudsman’s assessment, describing this deregulatory wave as a case of “maladministration”. “If companies don’t know when a legal final text is truly final, how can they plan whatsoever? It creates chaos for business plans. This is really not the space for indecisiveness.” argues Mateus Carvalho.
The deletion came as a proposal of the European Parliament, following lobbying efforts by the publishing industry, including the British Publishing Industry.
“Paper is not neutral, green or innocent in deforestation, including when used for children’s books”, adds Sergio Baffoni, senior campaigner at the Environmental Paper Network International. The pulp and paper industry is causing deforestation in Europe and around the world, destroying unique natural habitats, threatening wildlife and local and indigenous people’s way of life and livelihoods. From old-growth natural forests of Sweden and Finland to the threatened Brazilian Cerrado region, from Indonesia’s destroyed peatlands, home to Critically Endangered species such as the Sumatran tiger, to the pulp plantations in Mozambique, which devastated farmers’ families into poverty, the footprint of pulp and paper giants’ destruction is rampant, evident and tracked by the global network.