- According to the European Commission’s own research, leather could account for up to 17% of the deforestation footprint tied to European Union Deforestation Regulation-covered imports. This is roughly 390 square kilometers (149 square miles) of forest lost a year, an area twice the size of the Italian city of Pisa.
- Despite the evidence, Brussels moved earlier this month to drop bovine hides from the scope of the EUDR. The commission says it considered “qualitative considerations” in its decision.
- The move comes after intense lobbying by the leather industry. The main groups representing the sector held at least 22 meetings with European lawmakers since 2021, according to lobbying records, with more than a third occurring in the past year as the regulation neared implementation.
- Environmental campaigners argue that removing leather would create a loophole: beef remains covered, but leather — a high-value product in the same supply chain — could still enter EU markets without the same traceability obligations.
The clock is ticking in Brussels. By June 1, the European Commission, the bloc’s executive body, is set to receive feedback on its proposal to remove leather, hides and skins from the EU’s Deforestation Regulation (EUDR). Officials, however, are trying to push this amendment even after the commission’s own research confirmed that cattle hides also drive forest loss, a Mongabay analysis shows.
According to the commission’s Staff Working Document, research designed to support proposed regulations, leather can be associated with up to 390 square kilometers (149 square miles) of deforestation per year. That area is roughly twice the size of the city of Pisa, in the heart of Italy’s leather production and trade.
This means that bovine hides could account for up to 17% of the total 2,280 km2 (880 mi2) deforestation risk linked to all commodities covered by the new regulation. Although the evidence is part of the documentation, the commission decided to ignore it and balance out “quantitative and qualitative considerations,” it said in the document.
The commission’s Staff Working Document was published May 4, alongside a delegated act, as part of a proposed simplification package Brussels is putting forward ahead of the EUDR being enacted at the end of the year. After the public consultation, the commission could formally adopt the draft delegated act. Then the European Parliament and the Council of the European Union generally have two months to object. If they don’t, the changes will automatically be enacted.
In its working documentation, the commission argues that leather should be excluded because of its “lower economic value.” It also says leather’s complex, fragmented supply chain makes it difficult for companies to trace and obtain the information required under the EUDR. And it warns that keeping leather in the regulations could create “unbalanced” obligations between EU producers and importers of finished goods, and extending the rules would be too burdensome and impractical.
But in doing its calculations for the Staff Working Document, officials assessed two different scenarios: treating leather as a low-value byproduct of the beef industry, or as a coproduct in the cattle supply chain. Depending on the approach, the environmental benefits of including leather in the EUDR were estimated at 979 million to 1.96 billion euros ($1.1 billion to $2.28 billion) per year.
In either case, compliance costs were projected to be far lower — around 16.7 million euros ($19.4 million) annually, according to the commission’s own estimates.
The European Commission did not respond to Mongabay’s questions in time for publication of this story.
The move follows intense lobbying by the leather industry. Trade associations representing the sector — Italian tanneries union UNIC, and the Confederation of National Associations of Tanners and Dressers of the European Community (COTANCE) — have held at least 22 meetings with EU lawmakers and officials since 2021. More than a third of them took place in the past year as the deforestation regulation neared implementation, Mongabay reported.
Charlotte Izard, a parliamentary assistant to Marie Toussaint, a member of the European Parliament (MEP) from the French Greens and European Free Alliance, said the issue about leather has never been raised before as a crucial point during the trilogue negotiations — when the European Parliament, the Council of the European Union and the European Commission meet to debate legislation. “We knew that Italy was complaining, but the country was the only Member State to do so as far as we know.
“We’re angry,” Izard added. “The commission should explain this. We must ask why it decided to withdraw this co-product [from the list of commodities], and what political pressure they have received to do so.”
Critics warn that removing leather from the EUDR’s oversight would leave a gap in the regulation, allowing a high-value product from the cattle chain to keep flowing into EU markets without the same scrutiny applied to beef.
It’s clear that the European Commission acknowledges the environmental impact of leather, but it has also considered that companies in the sector “would not be economically incentivized to comply,” as the “economic costs would be too high,” said Klervi Le Guenic, campaign officer for forests at French nonprofit Canopée.
“[If] you are looking for scientific answers to this decision, I don’t think there are any,” Le Guenic added.
Science as a shield
In early April, Luis Planas Herrera, representing Jessika Roswall, the European environment commissioner, said the executive’s priority is an “objective assessment” that is “science-driven,” according to a Politico report.
The same framing has been widely promoted by the leather sector in Brussels, from public events promoting the industry’s sustainability to formal communications. Earlier this month, trade association COTANCE described its position as grounded in “academic intelligence” and “scientific evidence.”
In feedback submitted to the European Commission on the proposed EUDR changes, COTANCE reiterated that bovine hides should be treated differently because they are “just a by-product” of beef production and therefore not a driver of deforestation, citing “scientific studies.”
The industry has consistently made this argument. Last year, several tannery associations represented by the International Council of Tanners wrote a letter to the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, pointing out the socioeconomic impacts of including the commodity in the scope of the EUDR and arguing that leather is not a direct driver of deforestation, according to “technical analysis.”
The position has also found political backing. In early April, Italian MEP Dario Nardella, of the Socialists and Democrats group, supported the industry’s stance, calling leather vital for jobs and communities in the Tuscany region of Italy and describing it as a circular sector that “transforms waste” into a durable material rather than driving deforestation.
Industry evidence under scrutiny
In all these instances, the claimed scientific basis circulating widely in the debates rests heavily on a single industry-funded report produced by Italy’s Sant’Anna School of Advanced Studies, in Pisa.
Unlike typical academic work, the Sant’Anna study was published in 2024 directly by the leather trade associations rather than in a scientific, academic or peer-reviewed journal. Titled “Socio-economic and environmental analysis of the effects of Regulation 2023/1115/EU on the European leather sector,” the paper does not appear in scientific citation indexes, which would indicate whether other scholars have cited the work. The lead author, Fabio Iraldo, did not respond to questions for this story.
Peer review is widely considered one of the essential aspects of establishing the credibility and reliability of scientific research, forming one of the core principles promoted by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), a nonprofit that supports integrity in scholarly publishing. The Sant’Anna report does not appear to have entered that process.
Kieron Flanagan, a professor of science and technology policy at the University of Manchester in the U.K., said peer review is not the only indicator of whether research should be trusted, since it’s not a perfect method because it’s subject to flaws. He added, however, that single studies are not supposed to be decisive in science.
The trade association COTANCE, which has promoted the Sant’Anna study multiple times, did not respond to inquiries for this story.
Flanagan said he believes the danger in Brussels is pretending that a decision like this can be settled by science alone.
He said regulators “cannot wait 10, 20 years for a scientific consensus to emerge.” Instead, they should make tentative decisions that can adapt as the evidence evolves — and be transparent that there are “complex social, environmental, economic and political trade-offs to be made,” not “purely scientific” verdicts.
“There’s this tendency of politicians to say: ‘Oh, we were acting on scientific advice.’ It’s a way of deflecting responsibility, this is essentially a political choice,” he said.
What scientists informing the European Commission say
Peer-reviewed research paints a starkly different picture of cattle and leather’s role in forest loss.
A recent study in the journal Nature Food found that cattle production for meat and leather was the single largest driver of commodity-driven deforestation worldwide between 2001 and 2022. The paper, authored by Chandrakant Singh and Martin Persson at Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg, Sweden, estimated that cattle ranching accounted for 42% of global commodity-driven forest clearance.
The European Commission has relied on research by both authors in assessments linked to the EUDR. The studies included in the commission’s Staff Working Document are considered robust by policymaking experts and other scholars. They have been published in leading peer-reviewed academic journals and cited dozens of times as reference.
Separately, a study published in 2024 on leather imports into the EU estimated the industry’s hunger for hides is responsible for up to 31,000 hectares (nearly 77,000 acres) of lost forest annually.
Old playbook, new sector
Some observers see echoes of earlier industry strategies, such as Big Oil, in the leather lobbying efforts.
In the 1970s, internal documents show that Exxon scientists modelled the climate risks of fossil fuels even as company-backed messaging cast doubt on those findings — a pattern documented in a 2023 study in the journal Science. Tobacco firms used similar tactics to muddy the evidence linking smoking to cancer.
“It’s quite reminiscent of the way the fossil fuel industry has historically tried to sabotage the development of renewable energy — commissioning poor‑quality studies to back talking points and undermine laws that would clean up supply chains,” said Luciana Téllez Chávez, a senior researcher and campaigner at the nonprofit Human Rights Watch.
“All the scientific evidence leads to the fact that leather has an impact on deforestation,” said Catarina Vieira, a Dutch MEP who supports EUDR implementation. “At the beginning, leather was included in the regulation because of this, so it would be incoherent to remove it.” Vieira started a social media campaign last week to encourage European citizens to press the commission to change its stance. “This exemption, if it is acted on, sends a bad signal. Someone has to lobby to make it come back. NGOs already do it, but citizens can do it too,” she added.
Citations:
Singh, C., & Persson, U. M. (2026). Global patterns of commodity-driven deforestation and associated carbon emissions. Nature Food, 7(2), 138-151. doi:10.1038/s43016-026-01305-4
Laroche, P. C., Gómez-Suárez, M., Persson, U. M., Pendrill, F., Schwarzmueller, F., Schulp, C. J., & Kastner, T. (2024). Accounting for trade in derived products when estimating European Union’s role in driving deforestation. Ecological Economics, 224, 108288. doi:10.1016/j.ecolecon.2024.108288
Supran, G., Rahmstorf, S., & Oreskes, N. (2023). Assessing ExxonMobil’s global warming projections. Science, 379(6628). doi:10.1126/science.abk0063
Banner image: Plenary session of European Parliament, March 2026 in Brussels, Belgium. © European Union 2026 – Source: EP. CC-BY-4.0
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