Parties members of the European People’s Party (EPP), a large center-right political party, received political donations from influential companies linked to illegal deforestation and which are likely to benefit from changes to a key EU forest protection law, according to a new Earthsight report. Yesterday, the EU Parliament voted to postpone the EU Deforestation Regulation (EUDR) by one year and approved a series of amendments put forward by the EPP calling for less stringent requirements. Over €1.7 million has been donated to EPP members, including Austria’s Österreichische Volkspartei (ÖVP) party and Germany’s Christlich Demokratische Union Deutschlands (CDU) party, from companies and shareholders who profit from goods covered by the EUDR and have links to illegal deforestation or are exposed to forest-risk commodities, the report said. One of the approved amendments involves the creation of a new category of ‘no-risk’ countries, which will be subject to less stringent requirements in their management of forests than countries of ‘low,’ ‘standard,’ and ‘high’ risk. Under this criterion, most EU member states would be considered ‘no-risk,’ as well as China, the U.S., and Russia creating a “dangerous loophole” that facilitates the laundering of products from high-risk to no-risk countries, said Fyfe Strachan, policy and communications lead at Earthsight. Oil palm planation and native tropical rainforest on the island of Sumatra in Indonesia. Image by Rhett Ayers Butler/Mongabay. Julia Christian, a campaigner at the EU environmental watchdog Fern, wrote in a press statement that the EU Parliament approved the amendment “without assessing whether these changes…This article was originally published on Mongabay
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