The European Union “wants to ban coffee”? NO. We explain

Internet users are sending a screenshot article Biznesinfo.pl website, the title of which is: “The EU wants to ban coffee? Americans already have a substitute – it will soon reach us.” The title is catchy, so it generates emotional comments. Users of website X criticize “another thing” that Brussels officials want to eliminate. “What the f***? Coal, meat, dairy products, cars, travel, cash… But f*** coffee??!! Only Polexit will save our asses” – wrote an anonymous author on the site X , and this post generated over 125,000. views (censored by the editors, original spelling of posts). “Everything we need to live is being liquidated and they are pushing crap that will kill us! Depopulation is in progress!” – wrote another Internet user, sharing the above-mentioned post.

Even more entries sharing an article from Biznesinfo.pl about the “EU wanting to ban coffee” were published on Facebook. For example, on October 1, Confederation MP Bronisław Foltyn he wrote: “Do you like coffee? EUDR enters in 3 months! Some people still don't believe that it's true, most have no idea about it, and the few who know are waiting for a miracle. Will we wake up in the Polish People's Republic after December 30, 2024? instead of coffee, we will only be able to drink grain coffee? If in December, smiling people introduce EUDR, i.e. the latest, idiotic EU regulations that prohibit the trade in goods that do not have a 'deforestation-free' certificate, then, unfortunately, coffee will become a luxury good and most of us will us must say goodbye to it forever. Unless you go outside the EU for a weekend, EUDR is no longer valid there.

Other Facebook users have already written directly that the EU will ban coffee, e.g.: “The EU says no to coffee. Soon, in December this year, a new European Union regulation will enter into force. It concerns a ban on the sale of certain products, including coffee, if the company does not prove that its production is not related to deforestation”; “This is already going too far. Year 2050: The EU bans everything! Nothing can be done because everything is illegal and destroys the climate”; “Soon you won't be able to breathe or you will have to pay.”

Most commentators were critical of this alleged idea of ​​the European Union. “I'll have to go to some kind of coffee rehab if they introduce this! They take away all pleasures from people!”; “Agree to everything, but taking away coffee? In life”; “Soon we will be banned from breathing and we will have to blow through tubes”; “A bold test of citizens' patience and the durability of the union”; “Today's EU is a swamp of losers and we all finance it and why? And so they can punish us not only for money,” they wrote in the comments.

We explain where the message that “the EU wants to ban coffee” comes from and why it is not true.

As mentioned by MP Bronisław Foltyn, the regulation that is supposed to “ban coffee” is the EU Deforestation Regulation (EUDR). The regulation is not a new document came into force already on June 29, 2023, i.e. over a year ago. Member countries have been given 18 months to implement the provisions of the regulation, which is why they are now informed that they will start operating from December 30, 2024.

What is it about? In short: any entrepreneur who wants to introduce a product from the EUDR list to the EU market will have to demonstrate that its production was not related to deforestation and forest degradation. In addition to the already mentioned coffee, these will include: cocoa, wood, palm oil, cattle, soybeans, rubber and products derived from the above-mentioned goods, such as beef, furniture or chocolate. A certificate confirming the origin of a product from a deforestation-free area will be needed both to produce the product in the EU, to export it from it, and to import it into it.

So there are more products covered by the new regulations, but coffee arouses particular emotions. The reason, apart from its popularity in Europe, may be that its crops actually contribute greatly to deforestation. According to Coffee Barometer data from 2023, approximately 130,000 hectares of land were cut down for coffee cultivation over the last 20 years. hectares of forests per year.

But does this mean that the European Union “wants to ban coffee”? NO. Coffee will still be able to be grown and imported to Europe, but producers will have to obtain a certificate that the areas where they produce it do not lead to forest degradation or – if this is currently the case – move the cultivation outside such places. This information can be found in article Biznesinfo.pl website, whose sensational title is used as evidence to confirm the thesis that “the EU wants to ban coffee”. The text clearly states: “We reassure those who are afraid that their morning drink will be eliminated. This (EUDR – ed.) does not mean a total ban on the sale of coffee” – but Internet users did not read this far.

IN conversation with Reuters Vanusia Nogueira, director of the International Coffee Organization (ICO), assured that “Europeans like coffee very much and they will not be left without coffee.” She said this in the context of her appeal to European officials, whom she asked to postpone the “impossible” deadline for implementing the new regulations, set for December 30, 2024.

The appeal of the coffee producers' community has been heard. On Wednesday, October 2, 2024, the European Commission she informedthat it has issued new EUDR guidelines, amending the previous deadline. Now large and medium-sized enterprises can prepare for the new regulations until December 30, 2025, and small and micro enterprises – until June 30, 2026.

Contrary to the alarming message, the EU will not “ban coffee” after these dates either. The additional requirements for producers and importers may result in higher prices, although paradoxically, coffee is now reaching record high prices on the markets, and this is happening, among others, due to climate change.

As experts from the Fairtrade Polska Foundation wrote on International Coffee Day (September 29), such violent phenomena as droughts in Brazil or typhoons in Vietnam have resulted in exceptionally low harvests in recent years, which has resulted in an increase in coffee prices. Stockholm Environmental Institute quoted by the Bankier.pl website estimatesthat climate change has the potential to reduce global production of the main coffee species – Arabica by 45.2% and Robusta by 23.5%. “Climate change is felt practically throughout the entire so-called coffee belt, which is located between the Tropic of Cancer and the Tropic of Capricorn – both in Latin America, Africa and Asia. Farmers are severely affected by this,” it added.

So the real threat to the coffee market – and above all the reason for the increase in coffee prices – is climate change, not the EU regulation.