Who Bears the Costs? The Uneven Politics of Support under the EU’s Deforestation Regulation

The European Union (EU) routinely frames its Regulation on Deforestation-free Products (EUDR) as a key instrument to reduce its environmental footprint and combat global deforestation. Yet its extraterritorial reach and stringent requirements impose significant compliance costs on producers of the covered forestry-related commodities in third countries, prompting criticism from many EU trade partners. While the EU has recognised the need to support these countries in implementing the regulation, the scope, scale and direction of such support remain elusive. Situated within debates on regulatory power and distributive politics in green trade governance, this article systematically examines the political geography of support under the EUDR; how, where and in conjunction with what policy instruments does the EU provide assistance? Using mixed methods that combine data on official development aid (ODA) flows, capacity-building operations and outreach activities with reports from intergovernmental negotiations and implementation meetings, we map the distribution of support and the relationship to other EU policy instruments. Hence, the article identifies political dynamics that shape who is afforded assistance and how – and who is not – and discusses the extent to which existing support aligns with the scale of the regulatory challenge. It highlights the enduring problem at the heart of much environment-related trade governance of responsibility attribution and unequal capacity – a topic also evident in debates over the revenue generated through the EU’s carbon border adjustment mechanism, but most acutely illustrated in the implementation of EUDR, where small producers in the global south bear the heaviest burden.