Leather Got Cut From the EU Deforestation Law. The Argument Didn’t End.

Raw cattle hides make up about 1.5 percent of an animal’s value at the abattoir, according to the 2026 UNIDO guidelines as reported by International Leather Maker. That one figure sat at the center of a two-year fight in Brussels. It is the reason a hide can now enter the European Union without the deforestation paperwork that the beef from the same animal still needs.

The change is official. The reasoning behind it is not settled, and the people on both sides of it say so plainly.

What the Commission actually did

The European Commission proposed the removal on 4 May 2026. On 13 July it adopted a delegated act amending Regulation 2023/1115, the EU’s deforestation-free products regulation, to take hides, skins and leather out of its scope, as set out in the Euroleather press release. The U.S. leather trade’s summary of the change names three customs headings, 4101, 4104 and 4107, covering raw hides, wet blue and finished leather. Beef and other cattle products stay regulated.

Parliament and Council had a two-month scrutiny window. By 16 September the trade press was reporting the exclusion as official. A review of the decision is scheduled for 2030.

The case for leaving leather out

The tanners’ argument is about money, and about who holds the leverage. A hide is a by-product of meat and dairy. A tannery buys what the slaughterhouse sells; it does not decide how a rancher manages land. COTANCE Secretary General Edoardo De Paola has put it that way, arguing that tanners lack the economic power to police the cattle breeders upstream of them.

COTANCE President Manuel Rios was blunter on the day the decision was confirmed: “Today the European Union saved a European industry recognised worldwide for its excellency.”

The industry also points to research. A 2026 study from the Sant’Anna School of Advanced Studies and the University of Pisa, which the trade press says analyzed more than 94 million data records, reportedly found no scientific evidence linking leather to deforestation. In an earlier round of the argument, COTANCE added a practical warning: that pushing buyers toward synthetic substitutes could raise emissions and waste, as SATRA reported in 2024.

On the day of the Commission’s adoption, De Paola framed the outcome as recognition of leather as “a durable material and a by-product of the meat and dairy industries”.

The case against, from people who have worked on it for years

Environmental groups read the same facts and reach the opposite conclusion.

Earthsight, a UK investigative group, argues in a 2025 rebuttal to the leather industry’s claims that cattle ranching drives more than 90 percent of tropical deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon, and that the EU imports roughly €1.3 billion of bovine leather a year, about €263 million of it from Brazil. Its position is that demand for hides supports the cattle economy, which makes leather part of the problem rather than a bystander.

Other figures circulate in the same debate. Reporting by Eco-Business cites a Nature Food study attributing 42 percent of commodity-driven deforestation between 2001 and 2022 to pasture expansion for meat and leather, and a figure of around 31,000 hectares of annual forest loss tied to EU leather imports. When the proposal surfaced in May, Earthsight’s Miki Ng said it was “about politics, not evidence.”

Collective Fashion Justice, which campaigned against the exclusion, argued that leather is a profitable co-product of ranching and not a waste stream.

Where the two sides actually disagree

Strip away the press releases and the dispute narrows to one question: does a low share of an animal’s value mean a low influence on whether that animal is raised?

The tanners say yes. At roughly 1.5 percent of an animal’s value at the abattoir, they argue, the hide is too small a share to steer decisions about ranching. The critics say no. In their telling, leather is a profitable co-product inside a global value chain that depends on cattle, and a product can be small in the accounts and still be part of the margin.

Both sides are talking about the same animal. The disagreement is about what to infer from the arithmetic.

There is a second gap, and it is practical. Critics note that beef from a given animal must prove it is deforestation-free while the leather from that same animal need not. They also say traceability remains unresolved, especially in Brazilian supply chains where cattle move between farms in ways that blur where an animal was raised. On the industry side, Luca Boltri of the Italian tanners’ association UNIC acknowledged in September that the sector had not done well at telling its story in scientific terms, according to Eco-Business. The same report describes work on a traceability standard, EN 18199, and an aim to show responsible sourcing before the 2030 review.

What it changes for a bridle leather buyer

Nothing about the hide changed. The regulation governs import compliance, not the material.

English bridle leather is cattle hide, tanned slowly with vegetable extracts and then waxed and stuffed with oils until it is firm enough to hold a briefcase’s shape. The full definition of what the term means hasn’t moved, and the trade it comes from is old. A University of Leicester special collections post places the origins of Walsall’s leather industry as far back as the Middle Ages.

What the story does give a buyer is a better question to ask. Where was the hide tanned? By whom? What does the maker know about where the leather came from before it reached the tannery? The answers get harder to give the further upstream they go, which is the point the regulators and the critics have been arguing over. Marcellino NY cuts its briefcases from English bridle leather tanned by J&E Sedgwick & Co., and a buyer is entitled to ask any maker how far their answer reaches.

One point holds regardless of who is right: a briefcase that lasts forty years needs far fewer hides than one replaced every five. A leather object that develops patina instead of wearing out is an argument for fewer purchases, not a loophole in anyone’s regulation.

What to watch before 2030

The exclusion comes with a clock. The 2030 review gives the industry four years to show what it has said it can: credible traceability and responsible sourcing. The U.S. trade summary says the industry must demonstrate responsible sourcing practices and credible traceability over that period to inform the review.

The tanners are organizing around it. A Global Leather Alliance, a non-profit meant to fund joint industry initiatives, was launched at Lineapelle, according to the trade newsletter’s September report.

Whether the hide earns its exemption will depend on data that does not yet exist: where cattle were raised, how they moved, and what each hide can prove.

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Sources

• Press Release: Leather Out of the EUDR: European Commission Adopts Delegated Act — Euroleather
• Leather Is Out of the EU Deforestation Regulation. Here Is What Changed and What Comes Next — US Leather
• Leather formally excluded from the EUDR — International Leather Maker
• COTANCE argues against leather’s inclusion in EUDR — SATRA
• Leather and the EUDR: responses to claims of the leather industry — Earthsight
• Industry lobbying pushes EU to drop leather from deforestation law — Eco-Business
• After EU deforestation exemption, leather industry seeks to rebuild trust — Eco-Business
• The leather lobby is trying to weaken EU deforestation regulation — Collective Fashion Justice
• This Week’s News from the Global Leather & Footwear Industry (20 September 2026) — Leathernews.org
• Walsall Leather Museum — University of Leicester Special Collections blog