By Kate Abnett and Makini Brice
BRUSSELS (Reuters) -The European Union will delay launching its anti-deforestation law for a second time, Environment Commissioner Jessica Roswall said on Tuesday, postponing a ban on imports of commodities such as palm oil linked to forest destruction for another year.
Brussels had already delayed the law by a year after complaints from industries and trade partners including Brazil, Indonesia and then-U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration.
Roswall told reporters that postponing the implementation of the law was necessary to address concerns about the large volumes of information needed to enter into the information-technology system to enforce the law and was not linked to U.S. concerns about the policy.
Pushing ahead with the launch of the policy, which bans imports of commodities such as soy, beef and cocoa linked to forest destruction, without addressing the IT system risked causing disruption to EU businesses and supply chains, she said.
“We have concern regarding the IT system, given the amount of information that we put into the system. And that is why we will seek, with the co-legislators, to seek for a postponement of one year. And that will, of course, also give us time to look at the different risks,” she said.
“There’s a lot of information coming from industry and businesses in a short period of time. That is the overload that we see a risk for, and that is why we need this extra time to see how we can solve that,” Roswall added.
Roswall said she would discuss next steps with the European Parliament and EU member states, which both must approve the delay.
(Reporting by Kate Abnett and Sudip Kar-Gupta; Writing by Makini Brice, Editing by William Maclean)
