- As the EU’s Deforestation Regulation (EUDR) nears implementation this year, furniture giant IKEA may need stronger traceability systems to prove its timber isn’t linked to post-2020 deforestation.
- Although nearly all IKEA wood is FSC-certified or recycled, past investigations show this voluntary scheme can miss illegal or unsustainable logging.
- The EUDR requires geolocation data and stricter due diligence than existing certifications or regulations, but repeated delays and possible rule changes have created uncertainty for companies like IKEA preparing to comply.
- Industry watchdogs say high-profile companies like IKEA can “do more” to champion the landmark regulation and implement leading wood traceability systems, rather than relying solely on existing — voluntary— certification schemes.
Furniture giant IKEA is famous for its wood products, but it may soon need to tighten oversight of its supply chains due to the European Union’s Deforestation Regulation that comes into force at the end of this year. The Swedish company sources timber from both inside and outside the EU, with major source markets including Poland, Lithuania, Sweden and China. It processed nearly 15 million cubic meters (530 million cubic feet) of wood in the fiscal year 2025.
IKEA already emphasizes its commitment to sustainable forestry practices, which include ensuring that close to 100% of its timber has acquired voluntary sustainability certification or is recycled. However, investigations in 2024 revealed issues among some of IKEA’s suppliers in Romania, suggesting that even companies committed to sustainable forestry may benefit from the more rigorous traceability requirements under the upcoming EU Deforestation Regulation, or EUDR. To comply with the EUDR, companies must report geolocation data that proves a relevant commodity, whether domestic or imported, was not produced on land deforested after December 2020.
“The IKEA business remains committed to responsible sourcing practices that ensure our products and operations do not contribute to deforestation or forest degradation,” IKEA wrote in a statement to Mongabay.
However, the company also highlighted ongoing uncertainties regarding the EUDR requirements and implementation timeline. Adopted in 2023, the EUDR aims to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and protect global biodiversity by monitoring the supply chains of seven key deforestation-linked commodities entering the EU market: wood, cattle, cocoa, coffee, palm oil, rubber and soy.
“The traceability and thorough due diligence required by EUDR are a major business opportunity to manage risks and increase resilience through better knowledge of the supply chain,” says Tim Cronin, forests forward global lead with WWF, which has partnered with IKEA since 2002. “Resilient forests make for resilient supply chains.”
However, the EU has delayed full implementation of the EUDR twice now, and modified its reporting requirements following pressure from both industry actors and governments, who have claimed they lack the time and resources to implement traceability systems. The current start date is Dec. 31, 2026, but the law may be tweaked again in a simplification review set for April 2026. In the meantime, timber and other products linked to deforestation and forest degradation continue to enter the EU.
Strengthening traceability systems
Despite the start date drawing near, many companies are still not prepared to comply with the EUDR, says Rick Jacobsen, senior manager of commodities policy with the U.S. office of independent watchdog the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA). “The main hurdle in many cases is traceability because of the complexity of supply chains and the aggregation points along the way,” he says.
At the time the EUDR was adopted, but not yet implemented, in 2023, IKEA was among the companies needing to adjust its practices to comply with the new regulation. “With the additional requirements of EUDR, such as collecting geolocations and reporting standards, extensions and updates of our due diligence processes and systems are needed,” the company wrote in its sustainability report for fiscal year 2024. Its existing systems included a wood origin database and risk assessment tool.
“We fully support the intent of EUDR and have, together with our suppliers, already made significant investments to comply with the previous EUDR proposal and implementation deadlines,” IKEA said in its statement to Mongabay.
Environmental organizations can help businesses meet their commitments to deforestation-free supply chains in various ways, from long-standing partnerships to rallying support for the EUDR and making best use of publicly available traceability data.
In IKEA’s case, the business has partnered with WWF to promote responsible wood sourcing, among other initiatives, for more than two decades. Some of the WWF-IKEA partnership’s key accomplishments to date include helping timber plantation owners in Vietnam (from which IKEA sources 3% of its wood) acquire sustainability certification; mapping virgin and old-growth forests in Eastern Europe; and developing forest assessment tools, according to WWF’s Cronin. These initiatives can complement and provide a base for the “extensions and updates” mentioned by IKEA toward EUDR compliance.
Although WWF doesn’t provide legal support, Cronin says the organization “is strongly focusing efforts on encouraging companies to go beyond regulatory compliance.”
“We support this through science and guidance, such as the EUDR Guide for Business which includes recommendations for the adoption of practices that reflect high ambition,” Cronin adds.
In addition, data required by the EUDR can help watchdogs pinpoint areas for improvement in businesses’ sourcing practices. “The most important role that civil society can play for companies is that of independent oversight,” Jacobsen says. “But we can only do that if we have access to information and data, so transparency helps everyone in terms of allowing for more independent oversight by more actors.”
Previous regulations, voluntary certification insufficient
Although imports of illegally harvested timber are already banned in the EU under the 2010 EU Timber Regulation, forest advocates urge the quick implementation of EUDR to prevent wood linked with deforestation or illegal logging from slipping through the cracks.
A January 2026 EIA investigation, for example, found evidence of “illicitly produced rainforest timber” being imported to multiple EU member states, and the EIA contends that the EU’s existing regulations “are going unenforced.”
“Because of the more stringent due diligence and traceability requirements of the EUDR, a strong case could be made that if the order had actually been in effect [rather than being postponed], these illegal shipments would not have been possible,” Jacobsen says.
Another reason the EUDR will be a boon for forests, proponents say, is because it lays out a more comprehensive compliance regime than voluntary certification schemes like those administered by the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) or the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO).
For years, businesses such as IKEA have used the FSC as a benchmark of sustainable sourcing for wood. IKEA’s website notes that “In FY25, 96.5% of the total wood used by IKEA … was FSC-certified or recycled.” (In fact, IKEA is a founding member of the FSC.)
However, the FSC’s system has sometimes failed “as a guarantor of legal and sustainable timber sourcing,” according to the EIA in a 2024 review of three investigations by journalists and nonprofits into forestry practices in Romania. The investigations identified clear-cutting in protected areas, as well as fraud in wood transport reporting; some of the FSC-certified timber in question found its way into IKEA’s supply chains.
“Fundamentally, the reason we need laws like the EUDR is because voluntary certification schemes have not worked,” Jacobsen says. “They haven’t been able to bring enough of the sector — or even really a significant amount of the sector — toward more environmentally sustainable practices.”
Representing a move away from voluntary measures and toward a compliance regime, the EUDR can help “level the playing field” for companies already committed to sustainable sourcing practices, he adds.
Uncertainty from potential simplification
In addition to two delays, officials have changed the EUDR to make reporting easier for operators, and removed paper products from its scope. Although other proposed changes about categorizing risk have not been adopted, the regulation is set for a further simplification review in April 2026.
The EU leadership’s approach is “delusional,” says Andrea Carta, a legal strategist with Greenpeace Europe. “With one hand, they want EU businesses to thrive, innovate, and become competitive. With the other, they undermine legal certainty and the legitimate expectation that frameworks will remain stable and reward investments. That only favors irresponsible organizations and removes any incentive to innovate and improve businesses.”
While some corporate actors have been behind the calls to postpone and simplify the EUDR, many other companies have denounced the regulatory uncertainty as bad for business. In October 2025, 29 companies and organizations — including major businesses like food and beverage giant Nestlé and agribusiness trader Olam International — sent a letter petitioning the EU not to “reopen, delay, or change the EUDR.”
“The company signatories to this letter, together with their value chain partners — including smallholder farmers — have been actively preparing and investing in compliance with the current provisions of the EUDR,” they wrote, noting that they were on track to comply by December 2025. A delay, the letter warned, “would introduce considerable uncertainty and stakeholder disengagement and result in additional compliance expenses for businesses, contrary to the intended simplification.”
WWF’s Cronin adds that “the changes to the regulation have also diminished visibility and leverage for companies downstream who wanted to establish traceable and transparent supply chains.”
IKEA wasn’t among the signatories of the October 2025 letter, and appears to approach the delays over the EUDR’s implementation with caution.
“The changes made to the EUDR requirements could result in additional time and investment needed for our business to adapt,” the IKEA representative told Mongabay, adding that the company “can currently not comment any further on the potential impact on the IKEA business” prior to the upcoming simplification review.
Despite the regulatory uncertainties, a handful of individual governments and businesses have already shown leadership in implementing strong traceability tools.
In 2014, Romania implemented a timber traceability system, followed by an online portal in 2016 through which anyone can check the system’s data. (It was this portal that helped journalists and environmental groups catch dubious practices in 2024, including in IKEA’s supply chains.) In the cocoa industry, another commodity covered by the EUDR, Dutch chocolate manufacturer Tony’s Chocolonely created a tool to trace its cocoa beans back to the cooperatives that produced them.
Industry watchdogs say there’s still opportunity for major businesses with global recognition, like IKEA, to take further leadership in promoting supply chain traceability and sustainable sourcing, even in the face of the EUDR’s wobbles.
“IKEA needs to do more to be able to trace all of its wood back to the point of harvest,” the EIA’s Jacobsen says, and it “should be pushing governments in the region to develop traceability systems like what Romania has and … improve transparency.”
Banner image: IKEA allocates 16,000 hectares of forests for research to further improve responsible forest management. Together with European Forest Institute and Preferred by Nature, IKEA will start a research project that will explore, test and scale improved forestry practices, strengthening climate resilience and minimizing negative impacts on biodiversity. Image © Inter IKEA Systems B.V. 2026.