Brazil is “standard risk” under the EUDR, and what that does not mean
The European Commission classified Brazil as standard risk for deforestation, the European Parliament voted to reject the classification system, and the list is in force anyway. What the category actually changes about your due diligence, which is less than the word suggests.
What the benchmarking system is
The EUDR requires the Commission to classify every country as low, standard or high risk for deforestation and forest degradation linked to the commodities the regulation covers. The classification is meant to scale the obligation: the higher the risk category, the more scrutiny both operators and enforcement authorities apply.
The first list was adopted on 22 May 2025 through Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2025/1093. Four countries were placed in the high-risk category — Russia, Belarus, Myanmar and North Korea. Around fifty were classified standard risk, including Brazil, and more than 140 were classified low risk, including every EU member state.
The Parliament voted it down, and it applies anyway
On 9 July 2025 the European Parliament voted to reject the classification system, objecting to its methodology, its transparency, and the geographic pattern of the result — countries with well-documented deforestation records, Brazil among them, sat in the middle tier while the great majority of the world was classified low risk. The Commission had not published the underlying datasets.
That vote is widely reported as the list having been "rejected", and it is worth being precise about what followed, because the two are easily confused. The Commission had already formally adopted the list as an implementing regulation before the vote. It remained in force. Brazil’s standard-risk classification is the operative one today, and a first review of the classifications is expected in 2026.
If you are relying on a summary that says the benchmarking was rejected and therefore does not apply, that is the misreading to correct before it reaches a compliance file.
What standard risk actually changes
Very little, and this is the part the word "standard" obscures. Standard risk is not a relaxed category — it is the full obligation. Operators sourcing from a standard-risk country carry out the complete due-diligence exercise: information collection including geolocation of the plots of production, risk assessment, and risk mitigation where the assessment is not conclusive.
The category that genuinely reduces work is low risk, which unlocks a simplified due diligence in which the risk assessment and mitigation steps are not required. Brazil is not in it. High risk does not change the operator’s substantive duties so much as the enforcement intensity applied to them.
So the practical answer for a Brazilian supply chain is that the benchmark changed nothing about what you have to assemble. Anyone who read "standard" as "reassuring" and scaled back their evidence gathering has drawn the wrong conclusion from it.
Why a country classification cannot settle a supplier question
A country benchmark is a statement about a jurisdiction, not about a farm. Brazil contains both properties with clean, verifiable land records and properties inside embargoed areas, and the classification does not distinguish between them. It sets the procedural regime; it does not answer whether your particular plot was deforested after the cut-off.
That is why the evidence work is unchanged by the tier. The CAR entry, the deforestation history over the plot, and the embargo status are what answer the question the regulation actually asks, and they are properties of the supplier rather than of the country.
What we can and cannot tell you
We do not publish an EUDR compliance verdict on any company, and no data source can: the regulation asks about specific plots of production against a cut-off date, and the answer depends on documents held by the operator rather than on any public register.
What we hold and monitor is the Brazilian evidence layer underneath it — CAR registration, PRODES and DETER deforestation data, IBAMA embargoes — recorded with retrieval dates so you can show what was true when you checked. That is an input to your due diligence, never a substitute for it, and never a Due Diligence Statement.
This could still change
This page describes the position as at 17 August 2026. A first review of the country classifications is expected during 2026, and Brazil’s tier could move. The EUDR’s application dates have themselves been amended more than once. Confirm the classification in force, and the date it applies from, with the European Commission or your own counsel rather than with us.