The European Commission officially announced the results of the EU Deforestation Regulation (EUDR) national risk grading on May 22. All 27 EU member states were classified as "low risk", causing strong dissatisfaction among major agricultural product exporters such as Malaysia, Indonesia and Brazil.

The EU risk grading regulations are designed to prevent products related to deforestation from entering the EU market. The main agricultural products involved include palm oil, soybeans, coffee, cocoa and beef. Depending on the risk level, the due diligence obligations that companies must fulfill are also very different-the higher the risk level, the stricter the inspection and review.

The risk level is divided into three categories: high risk, standard risk and low risk. Low-risk countries outside the EU include the United States, China, Australia and Canada, while Belarus, Myanmar, North Korea and Russia are classified as "high risk" and the rest of the countries belong to the "standard" category.

Although this classification has not yet been officially implemented, controversy has surfaced. Dato' Carl Bek-Nielsen, chairman of the Malaysian Palm Oil Council, expressed strong dissatisfaction with the EU's decision to uniformly rate member states as "low risk", calling it "clear favoritism". He said. He pointed out that "the European Commission is well aware that some European countries are not performing better than us in terms of forest protection".

Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have also raised objections. Julian Oram, policy director of the "Strong Earth" organization, said it was "ridiculous" to classify Canada, Ghana, Papua New Guinea and Romania as low-risk countries, arguing that these countries have obvious deforestation and forest degradation problems.

Luciana Tellez Chavez, a senior researcher at Human Rights Watch, stressed that while Malaysia has made progress in controlling deforestation, indigenous peoples still face serious violations of their land rights, "often exploited without their consent."

It is worth noting that regardless of the classification results, companies in all countries must provide evidence (such as geographic coordinates) when exporting relevant products to the EU that their production processes do not involve illegal deforestation.

The European Commission pointed out that the publication of the risk benchmark is an important milestone in the implementation of the EU Forest Resource Reporting Regulation. The regulation will come into effect for large companies on December 30, 2025 and will be extended to micro, small and medium-sized enterprises from June 30, 2026.