InfoSAWIT, MADRID - Council of Palm Oil Producing Countries (CPOPC) did meet in the Embassy of Indonesia in Madrid, Spain, Tuesday, 28 May 2024. It was the meeting with Spain officials and stakeholders to get information and insight exchange about the latest progress about palm oil and the readiness about European Union Deforestation Regulation (EUDR) implementation in the European Union (EU) members and the challenges that palm oil industries faced.
Vice General Secretary of CPOPC, Datuk Nageeb Wahab was the moderator in the meeting. He was sorry for the issues namely in EUDR implementation that would start on 30 December 2024. The meeting noted that even though time passes by, the EU members namely Spain, and other producer countries were not sure to obey EUDR. This happened for the unclear implementation guidelines from European Commission.
CPOPC was also sorry for the unclear regulation but was still optimist with the preparation that EU members conducted, such as, the development of National Dashboard in Indonesia and e-MSPO (Malaysian Sustainable Palm Oil) in Malaysia to qualify the regulation.
In his speech, the Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary Ambassodor of Indonesian Republic for Spanish Kingdom, Muhammad Najib said that even though palm oil was the issue and subject in EUDR, these industries should also undertand that palm oil should be sustainable. “The main producer countries, such as, Indonesia and Malaysia would do the best to guarantee environmental conservation,” he said as in the official statement to InfoSAWIT, Thursday (30/5/2024).
General Secretary of CPOPC, Rizal Affandi Lukman sid that it would be important to get collaboration among the producer and consumer countries to implement EUDR. CPOPC saw that the next seven months would be crucial to avoid supply issues but make sure that smallholders would be involved in the supply chain.
Rizal also urged European Commission to re-consider what smallholders faced, and what producer countries had done, namely Indonesia and Malaysia to escalate sustainability credibility by developing platform of traceability.
Spanish Foundation for Sustainable Palm Oil Executive Advisor, Horacio González-Alemán said that palm oil would be the unreplaceable vegetable oil in EU. He also mentioned that responsible resource procurement through EUDR would not be easy thing to do and should get collaboration to solve every issue and bridge the gaps between producer and consumer countries.
The official from the government, Marta Angoloti from Ministry of Ecology Transition, Spain, who is also EUDR Competent Authority in Spain and Julius Seinen from Ministry of Agriculture, Netherland did appreciate the producer countries to qualify EUDR.
The stakeholders realized (crude) palm oil and its raw materials that would be hit by the regulation in in their manufacturer process, and supply disturbance risk for their business, namely if EUDR would run. CPOPC was also sorry about the possibility not to involve smallholders that represented 40 percent of palm oil plantations in Indonesia and Malaysia.
By the early of this week, General Secretary, Vice General Secretary and staffs of CPOPC did meet with Astrid Schomaker, Director of Green Diplomacy and Multilateralism European Commission in Brussels, Belgium. They also met the officials from EUDR Competent Authority in Netherland and Food Security Authority and Consumer Product Netherland (NVWA) in Den Haag. CPOPC managed clarification for Miss Schomaker and the officials in NVWA about the progress of traceability tools that would connect supply chain in producer countries that would connect with the operators in consumer countries. The officials in NVWA agreed to get technical meeting that would be facilitated by CPOPC with the related authorities in Indonesia and Malaysia to discuss more about the available traceability tools in EUDR implementation.
The meeting in Spain was also fully supported by Spanish Foundation for Sustainable Palm Oil. The goal was about to deliver new project of the foundation. The project would be practical guidelines in EUDR implementation that would focus on obligation system design that every company should qualify in the most efficient and simplest ways, establish permanent agency to get dialogue and collaboration with the governments in charge to implement the standards in Spain, and would connect with the European institutions to develop the regulation. (T2)
