The European Union moves towards closing the market for soybean biodiesel and jeopardizes Argentine exports.

The European Commission (EC) has taken a decisive step that could lead to the complete closure of the European market for soybean biodiesel from countries such as Argentina, Brazil, and the United States. Through a document published recently, the community body modified the criteria linked to the risk of ILUC (indirect land use change), after reviewing the global expansion of crops used for the production of biofuels. As a result of this analysis—which was subject to public consultation for just a couple of weeks—the EC concluded that soybeans now enter for the first time the category of "high ILUC risk", equating them with palm oil. In practice, this reclassification means that the European Union will stop importing soybean biodiesel or soybean oil intended for that purpose, allowing only the use of rapeseed oil, whose production is concentrated within the European bloc. If the project advances and is formally adopted this year, all exports of soybean biodiesel from Argentina ...