What Is the EUDR Information System?

The official record of submissions

This entry defines the Information System itself: what it is and what it is for. How record types, submitting actors and submission management work in practice are covered in the companion entry 'EUDR Information System and Due Diligence Statements Explained'.

The EUDR Information System is the European Commission's electronic platform for submitting and managing due diligence statements and simplified declarations under the EU Deforestation Regulation. It is part of TRACES. Operators use it to make the prescribed declarations available to authorities, obtain the relevant identifiers and manage their submission records. It does not conduct the operator's complete investigation of production legality or deforestation history.

Its function is easiest to understand as the bridge between a business's evidence and the regulatory record. A coffee importer may hold supplier contracts, plot boundaries, harvest records and a documented risk conclusion in its own systems. The Information System receives the required statement information. A successful technical submission does not make an inaccurate plot boundary correct or turn unresolved deforestation risk into negligible risk.

Statements and simplified declarations are different records

An ordinary due diligence statement records an operator's confirmation that the required due diligence was carried out and identified no or only negligible risk of non-compliance with the deforestation-free and legality conditions. Annex II governs its information. A qualifying micro or small primary operator instead uses the distinct Article 4a simplified declaration regime, with Annex III information and a declaration identifier.

The simplified declaration is a one-time submission mechanism, subject to its rules on changes and updates. It is not an ordinary statement with fewer mandatory fields selected at the user's discretion. Eligibility must be established before using it. A small importer buying products made by others does not become a qualifying primary operator merely because its staff count is low.

The Information System and statement guide places these records within the wider compliance workflow. Decide which legal record applies before configuring a software form or asking a representative to submit on your behalf.

What the system does with a submission

Submitted records undergo automated electronic risk profiling under the implementing rules. Authorities can use the system to select and examine products or businesses. The assigned risk status is not a public compliance score and is not disclosed to the submitting user. The system assigns a reference number to a due diligence statement, or a declaration identifier to a simplified declaration, together with an associated verification number.

These numbers serve different purposes. The reference or declaration identifier identifies the legal submission. The verification number provides additional security for access to its information. The existence of an identifier does not prevent a competent authority from later examining the products or taking action where the legal conditions are not met.

Authorities can delay making identifiers available within the applicable legal framework. Businesses should therefore distinguish a local draft, a submitted record awaiting processing and a record whose identifiers have become available. An internal instruction that treats every upload as immediate clearance can release goods before the required step is complete.

Who uses the platform

Operators and authorised representatives use submission functions. The amended framework also includes qualifying primary operators and Member States making existing database information available under Article 4a(4). Non-SME downstream operators and non-SME traders have a registration obligation under Article 5(2). Their registration does not create an ordinary obligation to submit a new due diligence statement for products already covered upstream.

Competent authorities, customs authorities and the Commission use the platform for their regulatory tasks. Their access and powers differ from a business user's account. A company's employee logging in is also distinct from the legal entity on whose behalf the employee acts. Confusing a personal EU Login with the company's regulatory identity can cause permissions and attribution errors.

Production, testing and technical interfaces

The Commission provides a production environment and a separate acceptance environment for training and testing. A practice record in acceptance cannot be used as the legal submission for an actual market transaction. Keep test and production account details, credentials and identifiers clearly labelled in operational records. A business should check registration separately for each environment it intends to use.

Manual entry and machine-to-machine integration are routes into the same regulatory process. Bulk geolocation files can reduce repetitive entry, but they must still describe the correct production locations. The official technical documentation changes over time; the September 2026 user guide describes current interface grouping and simplified declaration versioning, while an API implementation must separately check its supported service operations.

What to keep outside the system

Maintain your own connection between the submitted record, affected products and the evidence supporting the risk conclusion. Keep the reviewed version of location data, the responsible reviewer and the submission outcome. A folder of screenshots without a link to purchasing and stock records may be difficult to use when an authority asks which goods a statement covered.

The Information System evidence checklist explains how to build that connection. Before relying on the platform, test whether a colleague can trace one consignment from its internal lot number to the legal submission and back to the evidence. The result should be a controlled record, rather than simply a functioning login.

The company's internal stock system should use the submission identifier as a linked record, rather than replacing the lot history with that number. If a single reference covers several commercial deliveries, retain the allocation that explains those deliveries. That makes the platform useful as a regulatory record while preserving the commercial detail needed to investigate a particular customer's consignment.