...The EU is the largest coffee consumer market globally, accounting for 2.54 million tons of coffee in 2022, which is equivalent to 24% of the total world consumption of coffee.1

Coffee production is associated with significant environmental harms like deforestation and social harms such as slavery, and for that reason is included within the scope of the European Union Deforestation Regulation (EUDR).

The EUDR came under repeated attack from various industry lobby groups in 2024. At the forefront of some of the most bitter and groundless attacks were German and EU coffee industry lobbies. The EUDR has now been seemingly saved by courageous Parliamentarians and others who stood by this vital regulation, protecting it from amendments save for one: a one-year delay that ensures the EUDR will only come into application in January 2026.

In 2025 it will be crucial for the coffee sector to cease its attacks against European regulation and focus on compliance, rather than on thwarting the law.

This briefing provides separate lines of evidence for why it is vital that coffee be regulated by the EUDR, and why coffee companies seeking to undermine the EUDR or find excuses for non-compliance, should not be considered as neutral interlocutors articulating reasonable and data-driven arguments...

[Refers to 4C, Dallmayr, ECOM, Illycaffe, JDE Peet’s, Lavazza, Louis Dreyfus, Melitta, Nestle, Neumann Kaffee Grupp, Olam, Segafredo, Starbucks, Tchibo, and Touton.]