European Palm Oil Alliance
EPOA
The European Palm Oil Alliance (EPOA) is a business initiative to engage with and educate stakeholders on the full palm oil story.
ID: 675799233923-17
Lobbying Activity
Response to Effectively banning products produced, extracted or harvested with forced labour
20 Jun 2022
The European Palm Oil Alliance (EPOA) supports initiatives and projects committed to sustainable palm oil in Europe. Besides saving the environment and ending deforestation, producing palm oil with respect for human rights is a crucial pillar to achieve a fully sustainable supply chain. EPOA members also include a full scope of human rights topics in their supply chain due diligence work. This includes the challenges of forced labor, children’s rights and women rights violations. We consider it crucial that the upcoming legislation is looking carefully at existing certification and industry schemes. These contain principles and criteria that aim to prevent, mitigate and address human rights abuses and social issues in the palm oil sector and are based on UN Guidelines on Business and Human rights. There are for example clear requirements relating to labour standards and working conditions, including the right of workers to freedom of association. Furthermore, traceability should be in line with the specific commodity and local circumstances. A risk-based approach based on current due diligence practice should be allowed. Any regulation should not solely be looking at banning certain products on the EU market, but also study carefully any counterproductive effects this may have on both the producers and the downstream market.
EPOA is looking forward to contribute to the upcoming discussions that should lead to a workable and effective regulation preventing forced labour in supply chains.
Read full responseResponse to Sustainable food system – setting up an EU framework
26 Oct 2021
The European Palm Oil Alliance is underlining the aims of the EU Green Deal to protect the health and well-being of citizens from environment-related risks and impacts. EPOA also considers a sustainable food system crucial to get to a healthy and sustainable future world. As for the use of palm oil, we promote the use of sustainable palm oil (in food products). We consider sustainable palm oil as an important ingredient to feed the world, protect biodiversity and improve socio-economic development.
Our detailed feedback can be found in attachment.
Read full responseResponse to Commission Delegated Regulation on taxonomy-alignment of undertakings reporting non-financial information
7 Sept 2020
The European Palm Oil Alliance (EPOA) is a business initiative of palm oil refiners and producers. We believe that sustainably produced palm oil is a key food ingredient that fits in a nutritionally balanced diet and helps feed the world, protect biodiversity and improve socio-economic development. We push for sustainable palm oil market transformation and support initiatives committed to sustainable palm oil across Europe. We share inspiring stories about the people that make sustainability a reality. EPOA is happy to be able to supply input wrt the Commission delegated regulation on taxonomy-related disclosures by undertakings reporting non-financial information.
The move towards sustainable palm oil production and use is of key importance. We feel that the palm oil industry has made good progress over the last years. Besides moving to more certified sustainable palm oil in the market, also No Deforestation, No Peat and No Exploitation (NDPE) policies have been set up. More recently we have started a so-called Implementation Reporting Framework.
We also believe that it is important to be clear about what activities can be considered as environmentally sustainable. Especially when working in complex supply chains it is important to build upon a recognized framework defining these activities and monitor them.
The NDPE Implementation Reporting Framework is a reporting tool designed to help supply chain companies to systematically understand and track progress (or lack of progress) in delivering NDPE commitments across all their volumes. As supply chain companies implement activities ranging from certification to supplier engagement and from landscape initiatives to smallholder support, the NDPE IRF provides a tool to systematically capture all the different activities which are underway to deliver these commitments and clarify how each activity contributes to progress towards full compliance, while also highlighting where gaps still remain. The framework captures progress from early actions that create an enabling environment for sustainability, such as workshops and policy development, all the way through to implementation activities in the production base which deliver full compliance with commitments. Having a consistent framework for reporting on these activities, and particularly on the proportions of the total production base to which they apply, will allow individual companies and the industry collectively to monitor progress, identify gaps and drive improvement.
By moving to and making use of this harmonized framework, specific developments in the area of environmental and social topics can be judged better. We feel that the Taxonomy Regulation should also be building on these sort of sector specific frameworks as it can help investors to identify and compare the (economic) activities that do have a significant positive effect on environment and social well being.
EPOA is happy to work towards a proper integration with the Commission.
Read full responseResponse to Minimising the risk of deforestation and forest degradation associated with products placed on the EU market
3 Mar 2020
EPOA (The European Palm Oil Alliance) fully underlines the need to fight biodiversity loss and climate change. We agree with the need to move towards sustainable and deforestation-free supply chains for the EU market. EPOA supports the development, initiatives and concrete measures to produce, trade and consume deforestation-free palm oil. Our position is building on all the work and initiatives done and generated over the last years in the respective European countries working towards 100% sustainable deforestation-free palm oil in the markets.We also know that Europe will remain a large importer of palm oil in many applications including the food industry.
Europe can and should use its position in such a way to promote sustainable (palm oil) production and trade to create practical improvements on the ground. At the same time we see that we need more regulation both in producing countries to prevent deforestation as well as in downstream markets with regard to uptake of sustainable produced material.
In Summary:
• Europe will remain a large importer of palm oil for use in many applications including the food industry. It is important to be clear about the importance of sustainable palm oil production and consumption;
• EPOA supports the introduction of sustainable and deforestation-free principles and criteria within regulatory measures to create a level-playing field in the EU market for all vegetable oils;
• Regulatory measures should be introduced in a positive manner to promote sustainable production and trade and not being used as an instrument of protectionism or a non-trade barrier and should prevent increasing administrative burdens;
• Principles and criteria within regulatory measures should build upon existing private sustainability initiatives and (inter) national (voluntary) standards which includes environmental, social and economic aspects;
• Any measure should be built on sound scientific evidence;
• Measures should take into account possible differences in regional progress made by initiatives both on certified products as well as on verified areas;
• EPOA believes that a mandatory due diligence for European companies using palm oil should be one of the regulatory measures;
• EPOA believes that inclusion of Trade and Sustainable Development (TSD) provisions keeping in mind the above remarks within CEPA would provide the EU with an additional instrument to create a level playing field for all vegetable oils;
• EPOA acknowledges that sustainable deforestation-free production can only be achieved when good governance in the (palm oil) producing countries is in place.
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