The European Union (EU) has recently introduced the Deforestation Regulation to close regulatory gaps in the sustainability and legality of global forest and agricultural commodity supply chains. We analyze this regulatory policy change by drawing on accountability scholarship and institutionalist theories of regulation. Our results show that the Regulation aims to enhance corporate accountability mechanisms through mostly state-based hard regulation of commodity supply chains, reducing the role of market incentives and private regulation. This policy change is found to be the result of strategic policy-oriented learning from perceived accountability failures of existing soft market-based instruments, voluntary trade agreements, and experience with market-correcting EU timber legality trade rules in a politically favorable context. The institutionalization of new forest-risk commodity supply chain accountability norms in new EU trade rules would, by design, harden foreign corporate accountability for negative socio-environmental externalities. However, the de-facto hardening will depend on the final regulatory design, acceptance, compliance, implementation, enforcement improvements, and avoidance of leakage effects.

中文翻译：

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根据欧盟毁林法规强化商品供应链中的企业责任

欧盟（EU）最近推出了《毁林条例》，以缩小全球森林和农产品供应链可持续性和合法性方面的监管差距。我们利用问责制学术和制度主义监管理论来分析这一监管政策变化。我们的研究结果表明，该条例旨在通过主要以国家为基础的大宗商品供应链硬监管来加强企业问责机制，减少市场激励和私人监管的作用。人们发现，这一政策变化是战略政策导向学习的结果，这些教训是从现有基于软市场的工具、自愿贸易协定的问责失败以及在政治有利的背景下纠正市场修正欧盟木材合法性贸易规则的经验中吸取的。新的欧盟贸易规则中新的森林风险商品供应链责任规范的制度化，从设计上讲，将强化外国企业对负面社会环境外部性的责任。然而，事实上的强化将取决于最终的监管设计、接受、合规、实施、执法改进以及泄漏效应的避免。