What is an EUDR Due Diligence Statement (DDS)?

A coffee importer sits in front of the TRACES form for the first time. First time. The screen asks for a CN code. A country of production. A quantity in kilograms. Geolocation coordinates for every plot the beans came from. There is a field for the supplier, a box asking the operator to attest that the risk of non-compliance is negligible, and a submit button that will not light up until every field is filled. This form is the EUDR DDS. Until it clears, the container does not move.

If you have reached this page you are probably staring at something similar and asking the obvious question: what is an EUDR DDS, exactly, and what does it need from me? By the end of this guide you will know exactly what a DDS is, who files it, what it must contain, and what comes back when you submit it. The EUDR DDS is a Due Diligence Statement filed under Regulation (EU) 2023/1115, the EU Deforestation Regulation. It is the single legal object that says a shipment of a covered commodity is clean, traceable back to the land it grew on, and safe to place on the EU market.

What is a DDS under the EUDR?

The DDS meaning under the EUDR is narrow and specific. A Due Diligence Statement is a formal declaration, filed in TRACES (the EU Information System), in which an operator states that it has carried out due diligence and concluded that the risk of the goods being linked to deforestation after 31 December 2020 is negligible. It is not a form you email to a supplier or keep in a folder. It is a record submitted to the EU before the goods are placed on, or exported from, the EU market.

Regulation (EU) 2023/1115 covers seven commodities: cattle, cocoa, coffee, oil palm, rubber, soya and wood, along with a long list of derived products such as leather, chocolate, furniture, paper and tyres. If what you import or export sits inside that scope, you cannot lawfully move it across the EU border without a DDS reference standing behind it.

The DDS attests two things at once. First, that the goods are traceable to specific plots of land. Second, that those plots were not cleared of forest after the 2020 cutoff. That cutoff does not reset when land changes hands.

Who files an EUDR DDS?

This is where most confusion lives, so it is worth being exact about roles.

Only the operator, meaning the first party to place the goods on the EU market, or a solo operator who both produces and places, actually files the DDS. That is the importer bringing coffee into the EU, the company that first sells it into the internal market.

Traders and downstream manufacturers do not file a fresh statement. They reuse and pass on the upstream DDS reference number. A roaster buying already-imported green coffee, or a distributor moving finished bags, references the operator's statement rather than repeating the whole exercise.

Producers, meaning the farms and co-operatives that grow the commodity, supply the underlying data: the plot boundaries, the harvest records, the legality documents. They do not file the DDS themselves. Their job is to hand the operator clean, complete data so the operator can stand behind it.

If you want the reference number side of this explained on its own, see our companion post on the EUDR DDS reference number.

What must an EUDR DDS contain? (Article 9)

Article 9 of Regulation (EU) 2023/1115 sets out the information a DDS must carry. In plain terms, the statement pulls together five categories of data for each consignment.

• The CN code and a description of the commodity or product. For coffee that heading is 0901; cocoa is 1801, soya 1201, oil palm 1511, cattle 0102, rubber 4001, wood 4401.
• The quantity, expressed in kilograms of net mass and, where relevant, in the units used for that product.
• The country of production, and where more than one country is involved, all of them.
• The geolocation of every plot of land where the commodity was produced, with no sampling. Plots under 4 hectares are given as a single six-decimal latitude and longitude point; plots of 4 hectares or more must be described as a polygon tracing the real boundary. For cattle, a single point never satisfies the requirement.
• The name, address and contact details of the operator, and of the businesses and persons who supplied the commodity.

On top of that data, the operator signs the statement: a declaration that due diligence was exercised and that only a negligible risk of non-compliance was found. That attestation is the legal heart of the DDS. The data supports it; the sign-off carries it.

What an EUDR DDS looks like: a field example

People searching for an EUDR DDS example or an EUDR DDS template usually want to see the shape of the thing before they fill one in. Here is what the fields look like for a single coffee consignment. These are illustrative values, not a real filing, and they are described here rather than lifted from any third-party template.

• Commodity / product: Coffee, not roasted, not decaffeinated
• CN code: 0901 21 00
• Net mass: 19,200 kg
• Country of production: Colombia
• Plot 1 (2.1 ha): point, 4.123456, -75.654321
• Plot 2 (6.4 ha): polygon, boundary vertices in GeoJSON
• Producer / supplier: named co-operative, address, contact
• Operator: your company, EORI, address, contact
• Attestation: risk of non-compliance assessed as negligible

That is the anatomy of a DDS: identity, quantity, origin, geolocation, and a signed conclusion. Multiply it across every plot and every consignment in a year and you have the real workload behind the regulation. For commodity-specific detail, our guides on EUDR for coffee importers, EUDR for coffee exporters, and what EUDR means for coffee go deeper.

Where is it filed, and what comes back?

The DDS is filed in TRACES, the EU's central information system, before the goods are placed on or exported from the market. When the statement is submitted, the system returns two numbers.

The DDS reference number is the one that matters at the border. Customs uses it to link the physical consignment to its statement, so it travels with the goods and gets handed downstream. The verification number is issued for the record, confirming the submission itself. Traders and manufacturers further down the chain quote the reference number rather than filing anew.

When is the EUDR DDS due?

The regulation was postponed twice and simplified once, which is why so many older deadlines floating around online are wrong. Ignore the 2024 and early-2025 dates. The dates that actually apply are these.

• 31 December 2020 is the deforestation cutoff.
• 29 June 2023 is when the regulation entered into force.
• 22 May 2025 brought the first country benchmarking list, under Implementing Regulation (EU) 2025/1093.
• 23 December 2025 brought Regulation (EU) 2025/2650, the second postponement plus a package of simplifications.
• 30 December 2026 is the application date for large and medium operators. This is the deadline to plan for.
• 30 June 2027 is the application date for micro and small operators.

The Regulation (EU) 2025/2650 simplification is worth reading twice if you file at volume. It allows annual statements rather than a fresh DDS per consignment for goods you handle repeatedly, drops printed matter from scope, and lets downstream operators reuse the upstream reference number instead of generating their own. The workload does not vanish, but it stops multiplying.

How Bindu assembles and files the DDS for you

Everything above is a lot to hold in one form. Bindu is the trade-compliance OS that carries the whole path, from raw supplier data to an accepted TRACES statement, so the operator confirms rather than assembles.

Plots are mapped once. Search a map, drop GPS points, trace a boundary, or upload GeoJSON, and Bindu saves each plot for reuse on every future shipment. Each plot then runs through three independent satellite checks against the 2020 cutoff, minutes per batch. Those checks flag risk; the legal conclusion stays with the operator, because a flag is not a verdict. When an alert fires, you pick the reason (shade pruning, stumping, a geometry error, cloud cover, adjacent forest, a pre-2020 crop), attach evidence such as a registry entry or an old aerial photo, and the explanation travels into the statement.

Alongside the geolocation work, Bindu keeps the legality checklist, the eight legal areas of Article 2(40), with proof attached where you hold it. When the data is in place, the declaration assembles itself from your plots, harvests and checks. You review it, confirm it, and file to TRACES in one click. Bindu returns both the DDS reference number for customs and the verification number for your record. Every piece of evidence sits in a hash-chained vault kept for five years, and when the law changes again, your filings track the change.

If your suppliers are not on the system yet, drop a supplier invoice into Bindu and it reads the invoice and sends the invite. Each party keeps its own plots and documents in its own workspace and grants you standing access to a data package, so you pull what you need without anyone handing over a copy of their data.

Remember that blank TRACES form, the one whose submit button would not light up? Bindu fills it from your own supplier data, so the next time you open TRACES the statement is sitting there ready to confirm. Book a demo.

FAQ

What does DDS mean in EUDR? DDS stands for Due Diligence Statement. Under Regulation (EU) 2023/1115 it is the declaration an operator files in TRACES stating that a shipment of a covered commodity has been checked and carries only a negligible risk of being linked to deforestation after 31 December 2020.

Who has to file an EUDR DDS? Only the operator, the first party to place the goods on the EU market, or a solo operator. Traders and downstream manufacturers reuse the upstream DDS reference number rather than filing their own. Producers supply the plot and legality data but do not file.

What information does an EUDR DDS need? Under Article 9: the CN code and product description, the quantity in kilograms, the country of production, the geolocation of every plot (a point under 4 hectares, a polygon at 4 hectares or more), the supplier and operator details, and a signed attestation that risk is negligible.

Where do you file the DDS and what do you get back? It is filed in TRACES, the EU Information System, before the goods are placed on or exported from the EU market. Filing returns a DDS reference number, used at customs, and a verification number, kept for the record.

When is the EUDR DDS deadline? 30 December 2026 for large and medium operators, and 30 June 2027 for micro and small operators. These dates reflect the second postponement and simplification under Regulation (EU) 2025/2650 on 23 December 2025.