Indian coffee stakeholders will get more time to gear up to the proposed European Union Deforestation Regulations (EUDR) law as the European Commission plans to delay the implementation by another year citing technical concerns.
The EUDR, which is aimed at curbing the imports of certain products from deforested areas, was set to come into effect from December 30, 2025. It has already been postponed by an yea.
The EUDR mandates that companies exporting commodities such as coffee and cocoa, among others, along with their derived products to the European Union markets, must conduct thorough deforestation analysis, detailed risk assessment and risk mitigation to ensure that these goods are not sourced from deforested areas since December 31, 2020. India has been categorised as a low risk country recently.
Exports slow
According to Jessika Roswall, the EC environment commissioner, the Commission will propose to postpone the implementation of EUDR for another year due to technical concerns. Once put forward, member states and the European Parliament will negotiate on the final shape of the law, potentially opening the door to further changes, reports said.
“It’s good for us if it’s delayed. It gives us more time to get organised,” said Ramesh Rajah, President, Coffee Exporters Association.
Indian coffee exports had slowed down this year and one of the reasons attributed to the sluggish trend in shipments, besides the high prices, was that the European buyers had started insisting on EUDR compliant coffees from July this year in the run up to the proposed EUDR implementation.
Rajah said a lot of big growers have already geared up to comply for the proposed EUDR norms.
Board’s help
The State-run Coffee Board has come out with a free mobile application to help growers gear up to comply with the EUDR norms. Rajah said about 13,000 growers have registered on the Coffee Board app.
Rajah said the exports could pick up if there’s a delay in implementation of EUDR and when the new crop comes in over the next few months. Traditionally, the Indian coffee shipments during the last quarter of the calender year are slow.
“Most of the Indian exporters have geared up for the EUDR investing in systems,” said Praveen Kolimarla of Agrani Coffee and Commodities. There are likely to be some instances where in the customers may ask the exporters to drop the premiums.
Europe is the largest market for Indian coffee, which crossed $1.81 billion during financial year 2024-25. India’s coffee exports were down 11 per cent in volumes in the current calendar year till date at 2.89 lakh tonnes over same period last year’s 3.26 lakh tonnes.
Published on September 23, 2025