Arada Fuangtong, Director-General of the Department of Foreign Trade, revealed that on May 22, 2025, the European Union (EU) officially released its Benchmarking or Country Classification List, ranking countries by their risk levels in relation to the production of goods potentially linked to deforestation.
This classification is part of the EU’s Deforestation-Free Products Regulation (EUDR), which aims to prevent the import of products associated with deforestation into the EU market.
The EU categorises countries into three risk levels:
Low-Risk Countries
Standard-Risk Countries
High-Risk Countries
Thailand, along with Singapore, Vietnam, the Philippines, Laos (PDR), and Brunei, has been classified as a Low-Risk Country.
This means that products exported from Thailand to the EU will be subject to less stringent requirements for documentation, traceability, and evidence of compliance compared to those from Standard-Risk countries like Malaysia, Indonesia, and Cambodia, or High-Risk countries such as Myanmar.
