EUDR penalties and enforcement checks, corrective action, and sanctions

Competent authorities use a risk-based plan and must also check potential non-compliance identified through relevant information, including substantiated concerns. For operators, non-SME downstream operators, and non-SME traders, annual minimum coverage is 1% for low-risk origin, 3% for standard-risk origin, and 9% for high-risk origin. For high-risk origin, the 9% target also applies to the quantity of each relevant product. The targets are calculated separately for each commodity and do not predict whether a particular business will be checked.

Operator checks cover the due diligence system and the records for a specific relevant product, including due diligence statements or simplified-declaration material where applicable. Downstream operator and trader checks cover Article 5 records. If questions remain, authorities can examine products on the ground, review corrective measures, use anatomical, chemical, DNA, or Earth-observation methods, and conduct spot checks or field audits. Checks normally occur without prior warning unless notice is needed for an effective check.

Article 23 addresses potential non-compliance before a final finding. Member States must allow competent authorities to take immediate interim measures when potential non-compliance is detected from evidence or other relevant information, Articles 18 or 19 checks, or Article 17 information-system risk identification.

The listed measures include seizure of relevant commodities or products and suspension of placing, making available, or export. Article 17 also requires a system-flagged high-risk suspension to end within three working days, or 72 hours for perishable products, unless the authority extends it because more time is needed to establish compliance.

When a competent authority establishes that an operator, downstream operator, or trader has not complied, or that a product already placed, made available, or exported is non-compliant, it must require appropriate and proportionate corrective action without delay. The authority sets a specified and reasonable period.

Corrective action must include at least one applicable measure: rectifying formal non-compliance, preventing the product from being placed, made available, or exported, withdrawing or recalling the product immediately, or donating it to charitable or public-interest purposes. If donation is not possible, disposal must follow Union waste-management law. The actor must also address due diligence system shortcomings to prevent further non-compliance.

Member States set and enforce the detailed penalty rules. Article 25 requires penalties for infringements by operators, downstream operators, and traders and says they must be effective, proportionate, and dissuasive. It does not supply a country-by-country tariff or determine the sanction for a particular case.

The Regulation names penalty categories that Member States' regimes must include. For legal persons, the maximum fine must be at least 4% of total annual Union-wide turnover in the financial year preceding the fining decision and must increase where necessary to exceed the potential economic benefit gained. The 4% rule sets a floor for the available maximum; it is not a complete national penalty schedule.

Member States must notify the Commission of final judgments against legal persons and the penalties imposed within 30 days after the judgments become final. The Commission publishes the legal person's name, judgment date, a summary of the infringing activities, and the nature and amount of any financial penalty, subject to the Regulation's data-protection condition.

An enforcement file should let an authority trace a product from scope classification through due diligence, statement or declaration submission, market or export decision, and any later corrective action. Operators keep due diligence statements for five years. Downstream operators and traders keep Article 5(3) supply-chain information for at least five years. Competent authorities keep their own check records for at least 10 years.

Do not keep only a policy summary. Keep product-specific evidence that can answer the authority's likely question: why did the team conclude this product was deforestation-free, legally produced in the country of production, and covered by the required statement or declaration at the time it moved?