Canada’s man in Brussels wants to rework how the European Union’s landmark anti-deforestation law applies to Canadian businesses as the two sides explore ways to deepen their relationship.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Following Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s proposal to make Canada the EU\u2019s first \u201cassociate member,\u201d Ottawa wants to \u201cclean up some of the long-standing irritants that have existed\u201d between Canada and the EU, Jonathan Wilkinson, Canada’s ambassador to the EU, told POLITICO at a Brussels Playbook Live event on Tuesday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Chief among those grievances is the EU’s new Deforestation Regulation, which kicks in on Dec. 30 and requires companies importing goods like palm oil, coffee and wood into the EU to prove those products were not produced on deforested land.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The law has faced fierce backlash from several EU countries and the bloc’s trading partners. Critics argue it will generate hefty compliance costs for businesses and doesn’t provide enough exemptions for countries classified as having a low risk of deforestation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The application of the new rules \u201ccould be done in a manner that was easier for third parties,\u201d said Wilkinson. While Canada has \u201cno argument\u201d with the EU’s aim to halt deforestation, the law doesn’t include any \u201ccarveout that said you don’t have to put in place all of these burdensome requirements\u201d for low-risk countries, he added.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Wilkinson said Ottawa does not expect Brussels to create a unique exemption from the deforestation rules specifically for Canada, but is \u201choping to actually have a dialogue about how could you actually fix this.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Canada’s man in Brussels wants to rework how the European Union’s landmark anti-deforestation law applies to Canadian businesses as the two sides explore ways to deepen their relationship. Following Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s proposal to make Canada the EU\u2019s first \u201cassociate member,\u201d Ottawa wants to \u201cclean up some of the long-standing irritants that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":36800,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36799","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsreporters.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36799","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsreporters.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsreporters.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsreporters.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsreporters.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=36799"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsreporters.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36799\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36801,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsreporters.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36799\/revisions\/36801"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsreporters.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/36800"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsreporters.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=36799"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsreporters.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=36799"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsreporters.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=36799"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}