Netherlands against EU palm oil biofuel ban

The Netherlands’ foreign affairs minister Stef Blok said his country supported sustainably produced palm oil and did not back the European Union’s blanket ban on the use of palm oil to produce biofuels, Indonesia’s Tempo newspaper reported on 25 February.

Along with Indonesia, the Netherlands signed a memorandum of understanding in September 2019 focused on the joint production of sustainable palm oil.

Indonesia filed a World Trade Organization lawsuit against the EU on 9 December claiming that the bloc’s restrictions on palm oil-based biofuel is unfair.

The EU Delegated Regulation 2019/807 (delegated act) has defined palm oil as a high-risk indirect land use change (ILUC) biofuel feedstock, the use of which must be capped at 2019 levels until 2023 and then phased out by 2030.
Blok said sustainable palm oil production was the only way to overcome the dispute and acknowledged that many Indonesian independent farmers that solely relied on palm oil had been heavily hit.