EU Palm Oil Imports Declined -- UFOP: Ban on Palm Oil Crediting Proves Effective – POME Should Now also Be Excluded

(Union zur Förderung von Oel- und Proteinpflanzen (UFOP)) EU member states imported significantly less palm oil in the 2024/25 marketing year than the previous year. The decrease in demand from Spain and Italy had an especially high impact on overall figures.

From July 2024 through the end of June 2025, the EU-27 imported around 2.8 million tonnes of palm oil, representing a decline of around 692,000 tonnes or 20 per cent on the year before. The Netherlands was the main recipient, although the country's imports fell 2 per cent from the previous year's volume, reaching 959,000 million tonnes. It should be noted that ports such as Rotterdam or Amsterdam are central destinations for overseas imports and serve as ports of entry into the EU from where palm oil is shipped on to other EU member states. The Netherlands is also an important European location for biofuel production, especially hydrotreated vegetable oil (HVO). Italy follows as the second largest importer with an import volume of 835,000 tonnes – a year-on-year decline of 28 per cent.

According to investigations conducted by Agrarmarkt Informations-Gesellschaft (mbH), the decrease in palm oil imports to Spain was even more pronounced. The country's imports dropped around 40 per cent to 289,000 tonnes compared to the 2023/24 reference period. Germany received 227,000 tonnes, around 12 per cent less. Belgium and Sweden also imported substantially less palm oil from abroad, with declines amounting to 11 per cent and 30 per cent, respectively. In contrast, Greece, Denmark and Ireland increased their imports.

The Union zur Förderung von Oel- und Proteinpflanzen e. V. (UFOP) views the decline in imports as evidence of the effectiveness of the legal exclusion of biofuels derived from palm oil. Several EU member states, including Germany, France and the Netherlands, have already removed palm-oil based biofuels from eligibility for meeting national quota obligations. The UFOP also supports the proposed exclusion of biofuels derived from POME (Palm Oil Mill Effluent) and other residues of palm oil production, as outlined in the current draft bill to implement the revised Renewable Energy Directive (RED III). At the same time, the association urges customers to demand clear information regarding the waste-based feedstock used.

This call comes as biofuels policy increasingly focuses on waste oils. In the case of palm oil-derived waste oils, such oils must still be produced. Fears are that if these feedstocks are not excluded from counting, shifts in feedstock sourcing will increase, because with the national implementation of RED III, shipping and aviation will be subject to greenhouse gas reduction obligations for the first time. In these sectors. only waste-based alternative fuels are eligible for crediting.

Instead of relying on waste oils, the UFOP advocates for raising the cap on biofuels from cultivated biomass to 5.9 per cent (market share in 2020 plus 1 per cent), which is permissible under EU law. The association has argued that the use of crop biomass for biofuels production serves as a supply buffer to meet feedstock demand – also for the bioethanol and biomethane sectors. The aim should be to meet quota requirements with actual blending volumes and make a real contribution towards climate change mitigation in the transport sector. This approach would also help prevent high compensation payments by mineral oil companies subject to GHG quota obligations, which payments could result if the option of double counting were abolished as a consequence of RED III implementation.

The UFOP strongly supports the abolition of double counting, noting that it would eliminate a major cause of fraud that has been committed in the so-called advanced biofuels sector in recent years. READ MORE