Mighty Earth, an environmental watchdog, says it has documented a two-year lobbying campaign by US companies and trade bodies aiming to postpone and water down the European Union's new deforestation regulation. The group described the activity as a "blitz" of influence attempts directed at the law, which campaigners have hailed as the most progressive of its kind.
The report names a number of major US agribusinesses and sector organisations among those involved, including Cargill, Bunge, Mondelēz and the US Soybean Export Council, and states that the effort included more than 350 meetings. According to Mighty Earth, these interactions were part of a concerted push to shape the EU Deforestation Regulation's final form and timetable.
Mighty Earth said the stated objective of the contacts was to seek delays to implementation and to weaken provisions that would restrict products linked to deforestation from entering EU markets. The group argues that such changes would reduce the regulation's effectiveness in protecting forests and curbing the global drivers of forest loss.
The findings add to ongoing debate about how trade, regulation and private-sector interests interact in the formulation of environmental rules. While the report focuses on US actors, it underscores wider tensions between ambitious environmental legislation and the companies that stand to be affected by tighter supply-chain scrutiny.
Mighty Earth's study does not on its own determine the impact of the lobbying on the final content of the EUDR or on its enforcement, but it calls attention to the scale of private-sector engagement over the law. The report is likely to intensify scrutiny of corporate influence on environmental policymaking as the EUDR moves into implementation and enforcement phases.