EUDR scope: donations, free samples and promotional gifts

Yes, in most cases. The EUDR does not care whether money changes hands: supplying a relevant product free of charge, as a donation, corporate gift or promotional giveaway, still counts as placing it on the market if it happens in a business context. The narrow exceptions are genuine trade samples of negligible value used only to solicit an order, and products consumed in testing or analysis.

Why "free of charge" counts as placing on the market

The EUDR's due diligence duty attaches to anyone who places a relevant product on the EU market "in the course of a commercial activity" (Article 2(19) of Regulation (EU) 2023/1115). The European Commission's own implementation FAQ is explicit that this phrase is not about payment: commercial activity is "an activity taking place in a business-related context", and the combined reading of the operator definition in Article 2(15) and Article 2(19) means that any person who places a relevant product on the EU market "for selling ... or free of charge, for the purpose of processing or for distribution to commercial or non-commercial consumers" is subject to due diligence and must submit a due diligence statement or, where eligible, a simplified declaration.

The same guidance deals with donations and pro bono activity directly: supply to non-commercial consumers, and activity where no payment is made in return, both fall within scope — its own examples are donation and pro bono action. The point of the free-of-charge wording is to stop a business routing a product through a giveaway, a sample programme or a sponsorship to avoid the paperwork a sale would trigger.

What actually creates the obligation is a supply: an agreement, written or verbal, between two or more people for the transfer of ownership or an equivalent right in the product, after it has been manufactured or produced. A sale is one such agreement. The Commission's FAQ names the other directly — a gift agreement is treated the same way. A one-sided act with no recipient and no agreement at all, such as scrapping unsold stock, is not a supply in this sense; handing that same stock to a named charity or distributing it to customers as a gift is.

Donations and charitable giving

A business that donates a relevant product — timber offcuts to a community woodworking project, surplus cocoa products to a food bank, leather samples to a training college — is placing that product on the market in exactly the sense the Regulation targets, provided the donation happens in the course of the donor's commercial activity rather than as a private individual's personal gift. The due diligence duty sits with whoever is doing the placing, not with the charity receiving the goods, and it does not shrink because no invoice is issued. A geolocated, deforestation-free supply chain is either in place or it is not; the price on the transfer makes no difference to that question.

This catches businesses that assume "non-commercial" recipient means "out of scope". It does not. The FAQ's own wording covers distribution "to commercial or non-commercial consumers" in the same sentence as selling. A furniture maker donating a wooden bench to a school fête raffle is still an operator for that bench.

Corporate gifts and promotional giveaways

The same logic covers corporate gifting and marketing giveaways: a hamper of coffee and cocoa products sent to clients at Christmas, branded leather notebooks handed out at a conference, rubber-soled promotional footwear. If the item contains or is made from a relevant commodity under Annex I and your business is placing it on the EU market as part of running that business, giving it away free does not remove the due diligence duty — it only removes the price tag.

Where this differs from a straightforward sale is the paper trail. A sale leaves an invoice and a counterparty; a giveaway often does not, which makes it easy for a marketing or events team to never flag the item to whoever in the business tracks EUDR compliance. The practical risk here is organisational, not legal: the obligation is identical to a sale, but the giveaway is far more likely to be arranged by a team that has never heard of the Regulation.

Scenario	In scope?	Why
Charity donation of surplus cocoa or wood products	Yes	Supply free of charge in a commercial context is a placing on the market
Corporate Christmas hamper containing coffee or chocolate	Yes	Marketing or client-relations giveaway, still a business supply
Branded leather or wood promotional items at a trade show	Yes	Free distribution in the course of commercial activity
Conference swag given to the general public, no business relationship	Yes	Distribution to non-commercial consumers is expressly in scope
A private individual giving a homemade wooden gift to a friend	No	Not a commercial activity; private use and consumption are outside the Regulation

The narrow exemption: trade samples used to solicit orders

There is a genuine carve-out, but it is tighter than most businesses assume. Commission Delegated Regulation (EU) 2026/2102, adopted on 13 July 2026 and published in the Official Journal on 17 September 2026, confirmed an exemption the Commission had circulated for consultation during 2025 and 2026: samples of a product that are of negligible value and quantity, and that can only be used to solicit an order for goods of that type, are outside the Regulation. The condition is specific — the manner of presentation and the quantity supplied must themselves rule out any use other than seeking an order for products of the same type or quality.

This is the classic commercial sample: a coffee importer posting a small bag of beans from a new growing region to a potential buyer so the buyer can decide whether to place an order, or a tannery sending a swatch of leather to a prospective customer. If the quantity or value goes beyond what is needed to solicit the order — a full-size product rather than a representative scrap, or enough volume to actually use rather than just assess — the exemption does not apply and the free-of-charge rule above takes over.

The separate exemption: samples used for testing, examination or analysis

A second, distinct exemption covers products sent to be examined, analysed or tested to determine composition, quality or other technical characteristics, for information or for industrial or commercial research. It applies only where the product is either completely used up or destroyed during the testing, or is kept or returned for no purpose beyond meeting a legal or contractual duty connected to that testing. The Commission's implementation FAQ gives concrete examples: tyres sent to a vehicle manufacturer and destroyed in durability testing, a small quantity of a new food ingredient consumed entirely in sensory and safety evaluation, or a coffee importer bringing in a small sample from a new growing area purely to decide whether to place a larger order.

Both exemptions turn on the same underlying fact: the product never actually enters commercial circulation as itself. The moment a "sample" is large enough, valuable enough, or kept around for ordinary use rather than evaluation, it has left the exemption and become an ordinary relevant product, free-of-charge or not.

When a gift isn't a "supply" at all — the private-use boundary

The EUDR's due diligence duty only ever attaches to an operator or trader acting in a commercial activity. Article 2 and the Commission's guidance both carve out private use and consumption: a consumer who receives a product has no EUDR obligations, and an individual acting entirely outside any business context is not an operator in the first place. A personal gift between two private individuals — a hand-carved wooden item made as a hobby, say — never engages the Regulation, because no commercial activity occurs on either side.

The line to watch is not the absence of payment, which is irrelevant, but whether a business is involved in the supply at all. A sole trader giving away stock from their own business is acting commercially; the same person giving away something they own personally, unconnected to the business, is not.

Who owes the due diligence statement, and by when

The obligation sits with whoever is placing the product on the market — the donor, the gifting business, the sample sender — exactly as it would for a sale. Size still determines the applicable date; giving a product away rather than selling it changes nothing about the deadline.

Your business	Deadline
Large or medium operator or trader	30 December 2026
Micro or small operator, product previously covered by the EU Timber Regulation	30 December 2026
Micro or small operator, non-timber product	30 June 2027

The full breakdown of which date applies to which business covers how size and product history interact; a gifting or sampling programme does not sit on a separate timetable from the rest of your due diligence work. Businesses that qualify as micro or small get the same simplified declaration route and other concessions for donated or given-away products as they do for sold ones — see what the micro and small operator simplifications actually cover.

Practical steps for marketing, CSR and gifting teams

The compliance risk in this area is mostly about visibility, not legal complexity. Three steps cover most of it:

• Treat any gift, donation or giveaway of an Annex I commodity the same as a sale from the moment the decision is made, not after goods have already left the business. By the time a hamper has shipped, the due diligence statement should already exist.
• Ask marketing, CSR, events and procurement teams whether they handle anything containing coffee, cocoa, wood, rubber, leather, palm oil, soya or cattle products, and route anything that does to whoever manages your EUDR filings. These teams are the most likely in any business to arrange a free supply without flagging it.
• Keep a clear record of what was genuinely a commercial sample or a testing sample, and why — the quantity sent, the purpose stated to the recipient, and what happened to it afterwards. That record is what distinguishes an exempt sample from an ordinary free-of-charge supply if a competent authority asks.

Once a donation, gift or sample is confirmed in scope, the mechanics are identical to any other relevant product: geolocation of the production plot, evidence the commodity is deforestation-free after 31 December 2020, a documented risk assessment, and a statement filed in TRACES. The TRACES filing process, step by step covers that in full. Getting the scope call wrong in either direction has the same consequences as any other missed filing — see what non-compliance actually costs for the penalty regime.

Check whether a specific product your business gives away is in scope rather than assuming a lack of payment settles the question, because it does not.