Coordinating Minister for Economic Affairs Airlangga Hartarto recently said that the wave of rejection of the implementation of the European Union’s Deforestation-free Regulation (EUDR) is increasing, now including opposing voices from United States lawmakers. Last September, Hartarto said, a bipartisan group of American lawmakers, including Republican Michelle Steel and Democrat lawmaker Terri Sewell, wrote a letter to US Trade Representative Katherine Tai, urging her to engage with European leaders. The letter claimed that the US “does not have any deforestation problems”, arguing that the EUDR should have focused on “countries in which illegal deforestation is occurring”. US senators Marsha Blackburn and Angus King, among others, penned a similar letter to Tai in March, expressing serious concerns about the EUDR’s potential effects on their country’s pulp and paper industry. A copy of the letter says that the EUDR will impose “costly requirements on US exporters that will limit market access for the US$3.5 billion in US forest-derived products entering the EU annually”. In a separate letter, also directed to Tai, American senator Josh Hawley said that the policy would be detrimental to Missouri’s soybean farmers.It is not just American politicians who are anxious about the EUDR. Brazilian Agriculture Minister Carlos Favaro has called the EUDR an “affront” of World Trade Organization (WTO) rules. Brazil, alongside Indonesia and 15 other countries, also sent a joint letter to the EU’s top officials, even arguing that the EUDR has established “an inherently discriminatory and punitive unilateral benchmarking system that is potentially inconsistent with WTO obligations”. Other countries signing this letter include Thailand, Argentina and Ghana, to name a few. From the EU, objections have also been raised by a major farmers association in the EU, Copa-Cogeca, which said it was impossible to implement the provisions of the EUDR on time. Hartarto concluded, the fight against EUDR, which Indonesia initiated during its joint mission with Malaysia, continues to secure support from like-minded countries.Link di fonte: https://asiatoday.id/read/indonesia-malaysia-us-reject-implementation-of-eudr (ICE GIACARTA)

Fonte notizia: Asia Today, 29 April 2024