EUDR Penalties: What Happens If You Get It Wrong?

For businesses preparing for the EU Deforestation Regulation (EUDR), the focus is often on deadlines, geolocation and traceability. But there is another question worth asking: what happens if an organisation does not comply?

The EUDR requires Member States to establish penalties for infringements that are effective, proportionate and dissuasive. Article 25 of Regulation (EU) 2023/1115 also sets minimum requirements for the types of penalties national authorities must provide.

Can you produce the evidence a buyer needs, before a penalty is even on the table?

How serious can the penalties be?

One of the figures attracting attention is 4%. Under Article 25, for a legal person, the maximum amount of a fine must be at least 4% of the operator’s, downstream operator’s or trader’s total annual EU-wide turnover in the financial year preceding the fining decision. The regulation also says fines should be structured so that they remove the economic benefit gained from the infringement where necessary.

That does not mean every EUDR violation automatically results in a 4% fine. Member States establish their own enforcement rules within the framework of the regulation.

Ireland provides one example. Its 2026 draft legislation, the Deforestation and Forest Degradation Bill, proposes maximum fines on indictment of the higher of €10 million, 4% of aggregate EU-wide turnover, or the potential economic benefit gained from the offence. The draft also proposes other enforcement measures and custodial sentences for certain offences. It is a General Scheme, not enacted law, and the heads may change.

Fines are not the only risk

Financial penalties are only part of the picture. The EUDR framework also provides for measures including:

• Confiscation of relevant products or revenues. Non-compliant products may be subject to confiscation, and revenues obtained through the infringement may also be affected.
• Temporary restrictions on market activity. Depending on the infringement, authorities can impose temporary prohibitions on placing relevant products on the EU market or exporting them from the EU.
• Exclusion from public procurement. Certain serious infringements can result in temporary exclusion from public procurement procedures and access to public funding.

The commercial consequences can therefore extend beyond the fine itself.

The bigger risk may start before a penalty

For an agricultural exporter, the immediate issue may not be receiving a fine. It may be being unable to produce the information needed to support due diligence.

Many African exporters will not themselves be the EU operator who is fined. They will still feel the enforcement. A European buyer who is in scope still needs geolocation, lot history and supplier evidence from the people upstream. That request often reaches the exporter before any penalty that applies to them.

Under the EUDR, relevant information includes details about the product, its production area and the geolocation of the plots where relevant commodities were produced. EUDR Explained covers those information requirements in more detail. The deadline article covers who must be ready from 30 December 2026.

Consider a coffee shipment built from multiple producers and plots. When a buyer asks “Where did this shipment come from?”, can your organisation connect the shipment to the relevant production areas and supporting records? If the answer is no, the commercial problem has already started, whether or not a fine has been issued.

Where Origin Secure fits

Origin Secure helps agricultural exporters and cooperatives capture plot-level origin and keep that evidence attached as a batch moves through the supply chain. The question is not “How do we avoid a fine?” It is whether the records behind each lot can be produced when a buyer asks.

It does not replace an organisation’s legal responsibility to conduct EUDR due diligence, and it does not submit the due diligence statement. It produces the pack that makes that filing possible: plot, batch and evidence in one place, so the operator who files is not working from disconnected files.