December 30, 2026 is the deadline for small and medium enterprises — including coffee and cacao cooperatives — to comply with the EU Deforestation Regulation (EUDR). For large companies, the deadline was December 2025.
If your cooperative exports coffee, cacao, or any other regulated commodity to Europe without an active Due Diligence Statement (DDS), you are operating in violation. The consequences are concrete.
EUDR penalties: what the law says
Article 25 of Regulation (EU) 2023/1115 requires Member States to impose "effective, proportionate and dissuasive" penalties, including:
- Fines of up to 4% of annual EU turnover in the previous fiscal year
- Confiscation of products and revenues from their sale
- Temporary exclusion from EU public procurement and financing
- Temporary ban on placing or exporting the regulated products
For a cooperative exporting €500,000 per year to Europe, a 4% fine means €20,000 — plus loss of contract and reputation.
What "non-compliance" means in practice
There are three levels of non-compliance. No DDS at all is the most serious infraction — products can be stopped at EU customs. An incomplete DDS (missing GPS polygons or post-2020 deforestation verification) can lead to lot rejection. An unverifiable DDS is increasingly being caught as buyer portals become standard.
The 30-day compliance path
For a cooperative with 200–2,000 producer members, compliance has four steps: georeferenced member registry (polygon-level GPS, not just address), deforestation verification against GFC2020, DDS generation per lot, and a buyer portal for European importers to verify before shipment. Terralyr automates steps 2, 3, and 4.