EPC welcomes EU Institutions Recognition of the Specific Nature of Printed products excluding them from the Deforestation Regulation

The European Publishers Council (EPC) today wholeheartedly welcomed the provisional political agreement reached between the Council and the European Parliament on a targeted revision of the EU Regulation on deforestation-free products (EUDR). This crucial agreement officially excludes printed products, including newspapers, magazines, and books, from the scope of the Regulation.

The EPC congratulates the representatives of both EU institutions for demonstrating a clear understanding of the unique characteristics of the print sector. This decision prevents an unjustified and disproportionate burden on publishers by acknowledging the minimal risk of deforestation associated with these items.

This is a significant victory for the publishing industry and for the freedom of information as it reflects a sensible recognition by the EU institutions that treating printed products as mere commodities is fundamentally incompatible with their essential role as vehicles for information, content, and culture.

The EPC had consistently argued that the principle of traceability, as envisioned under the original EUDR framework, was practically impossible to apply to printed products in a meaningful or useful way. The complex and highly mixed nature of the manufacturing supply chain (with one estimate suggesting a single book could be linked to as many as 300,000 plots of land) underscored the unworkable nature of the original proposal.

The EPC now calls upon the EU Institutions to swiftly and formally confirm this provisional agreement, ensuring regulatory certainty for the thousands of publishers, distributors, and printers across Europe.