From 30 December 2026, no consignment of Brazilian coffee — or soy, timber, cocoa, cattle, rubber and their derivatives — reaches the EU market without a due diligence statement behind it. If your company is the first one established in the Union to handle it, that obligation is yours. We assemble the evidence the statement stands on: fieldwork in Brazil, accountability in the Union.
30 December 2026
Regulation (EU) 2023/1115, as amended by Regulations (EU) 2024/3234 and (EU) 2025/2650 and by Delegated Regulation (EU) 2026/2102 — consolidated text of 18 September 2026. Application dates: Article 38.
Where a party established outside the Union places the goods on the market, Article 7 deems the first person established in the Union who makes them available to be an operator. It does not move the obligation elsewhere — depending on how the transaction is built, the party outside the Union can fall within the definition too. Your position is established from the customs arrangements and the actual flow, never assumed because someone upstream handled part of it.
The standard is information that is conclusive and verifiable. A producer's own declaration, a signed undertaking or a filled-in spreadsheet rarely meets it on its own.
Penalties reach a maximum of at least 4% of annual EU-wide turnover, alongside confiscation of the goods and of the revenue from the transaction, and a market ban for serious or repeated infringement.
And the clock is not the arrival of the ship. The reference number of the statement has to be available to customs before the goods are released for free circulation — which means the farm coordinates have to exist weeks before the container does.
This page describes the regime in general terms. How it applies to a given transaction depends on who is the importer and declarant of record, and needs to be established case by case.
The December 2025 revision redrew this, and a good deal of the market has not caught up. Establishing which role you hold, on each route, decides whether you need an origin dossier at all.
You place the goods on the EU market first, or export them. You carry out the due diligence and submit the statement before the goods are placed on the market or exported, with the reference number available for the customs formality. This is the party that needs evidence from origin.
You place on the market products made using relevant products already covered by a statement upstream. No new statement of your own. Non-SMEs register in the Information System; the supplier and customer records have to hold up either way.
You make relevant products available on the market, being neither the operator nor a downstream operator. No statement of your own. Non-SMEs register; the supplier and customer trail has to be retained and produced on request.
If you are downstream or a trader, you do not need what is described below — you need your references and records in order, which is a far smaller piece of work. We would rather tell you that at the first call than halfway through a project. One caution on the SME line that decides several of these duties: it is assessed on headcount, turnover and balance sheet, and partner and linked enterprises count, so the importing company's own figures are not the whole test.
For operators. Coffee is where most of the Brazilian volume into the Union sits, and where we start; the other commodities follow the same structure.
Every plot the consignment came from, with the date or period of production — latitude and longitude to at least six decimal places, and, above four hectares, a polygon describing the perimeter. Where a lot mixes plots, all of them. For cattle, every establishment the animals were kept at.
Title and registry position, environmental registration, licences, embargo status, and the right to use that area for that production — the point most supplier files omit.
Evidence of the condition of each plot since the cut-off date set by the Regulation, documented so a competent authority can verify it independently.
The route from plot to port through every aggregation point — cooperative, warehouse, mill — with no documentary gap where the lot changes hands.
Not a document dump: a written analysis concluding on the degree of risk and showing how that conclusion was reached, with mitigation where the risk is more than negligible.
The due diligence system is reviewed at least yearly and records are kept for five years. New suppliers are onboarded into the same structure as they appear.
Seven commodities and a list of derived products set by customs code. Most of the surprises are in the derivatives.
Green and roasted coffee now; soluble coffee, extracts and concentrates were added to Annex I and come into scope on 30 December 2027. Brazil's most exposed chain, and the one with most volume into the Union.
Plot-level coordinates for every farm in the lot, proof the area is legally held, and traceability from farm to container.
Cooperative sourcing: hundreds of smallholders blended into one lot, with uneven land-tenure documentation.
Incoterms allocate delivery, cost, risk and formalities between seller and buyer. They do not decide who is the operator — that follows from who first places the goods on the EU market, product by product and route by route. Reading the two together is where most of the surprises are found.
| Terms | Import clearance normally sits with | What the term does not settle |
|---|---|---|
| EXW · FCA · FOB | You, the buyer | Who is named as importer and declarant, and who first places the goods on the EU market |
| CFR · CIF · CPT · CIP | You, the buyer | The same. Freight and, where it applies, insurance change the cost, not the regulatory position |
| DAP · DPU | You, the buyer | Delivery at a named place inside the Union does not transfer import formalities, nor fix the EUDR role |
| DDP | Your supplier | Whether the supplier is established in the Union, in what capacity its customs representative acts, and whether a valid statement already covers the goods |
Orientation only, and the column on the right is the point. The same company can hold different roles in different transactions, so the role is established from the customs documentation and the actual flow of the goods — not read off the delivery term. Where the two diverge is usually where the risk sits. Note also that FOB, CFR and CIF are terms for sea and inland waterway carriage; the others are used across modes.
Fieldwork in Brazil is delivered with GSS, a sustainability consultancy with fifteen years of corporate practice and offices in Curitiba, Porto Alegre, São Paulo and Brasília. GSS puts its record at more than 1,500 projects for over 300 corporate clients in more than 15 countries, across carbon project development, responsible sourcing and biodiversity.
Your contract is with a company established in the Netherlands. One counterparty, one point of contact, in your jurisdiction and your language.
It has been twice — by Regulation (EU) 2024/3234 and again by Regulation (EU) 2025/2650 — which is why the expectation persists. What has happened since points the other way: the July 2026 delegated act did not touch the application dates in Article 38, and set 30 December 2027 for the products it added. The timetable is being built on, not reopened.
Certification helps, sometimes considerably, as evidence within the risk assessment. On its own it does not discharge the due diligence obligation or replace the statement the operator has to submit.
Often they can send something. The question is whether it is conclusive and verifiable, whether it covers every plot in the lot, and whether it survives a check. In practice the gap is rarely goodwill — it is land-tenure documentation and plot-level coordinates.
It follows whoever places the goods on the EU market first. Since the December 2025 revision, downstream operators and traders do not carry out their own due diligence or file their own statement — the duty stays upstream, with record-keeping and, for non-SMEs, registration in the Information System. One exception matters: where a non-SME meets a substantiated concern, it has to verify that due diligence was exercised before placing the goods. Establishing which of these you are, per route, is where this conversation should start.
Underneath it. Most platforms give you a workflow, a risk screen and a route into TRACES, and a portal for your suppliers to fill in. The portal is a container. Someone still has to reach the farm, record the plot, pull the land and environmental records, check embargo status and reconcile a lot that a cooperative blended from two hundred growers. That is the work we do, and it is the part your Brazilian suppliers most often cannot do alone. We are not a platform and do not ask you to replace one.
The Regulation lists derived products by customs code, and the list reaches furniture, chocolate, tyres and soya meal. It cuts the other way too: a product that merely contains coffee or cocoa, but is classified in another chapter of the nomenclature, is not automatically in scope. And the list moves — bovine leather came out of Annex I in 2026, soluble coffee goes in from December 2027. Checking your own codes against the current annex takes an afternoon and occasionally changes the picture entirely, in both directions.
Two to three weeks, fixed fee, no commitment beyond it. It tells you the size of the task before anyone commits to delivering it — and occasionally it tells you there is no task, which is worth knowing in November rather than in January.
info@poita.eu
Copied