Antonio Tajani, Vice-President of the Council of Ministers and Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation (MAECI), wrote to Ursula von der Leyen (President of the European Commission) and Maroš Šefčovič (Commissioner for Trade). And it did so to ask for two things: that cowhide be excluded from the list of products that must be subject to the EUDR anti-Deforestation Regolamento or that this be profoundly simplified, eliminating the burden of geolocation of farms for the entire life cycle of the animal from low-risk countries.

On 16 June, Tajani met Fabrizio Nuti and Piero Rosati, respectively president and vice-president of UNIC – Concerie Italiane, with a delegation of local administrators in Rome. The meeting was propitious precisely to discuss the burdens (unsustainable and undue, since leather is not a driver of hashtag#deforestazione ) that the EUDR imposes on Italian tanning. Now the message is delivered to the EU: the regulation comes into force in 2026 and there is still time to amend it. For Italian tanning it is an “existential question”, the minister acknowledges.