The European Commission plans to phase out the use of biofuels from palm and soybean oil by 2030

The European Commission has launched a public consultation on draft amendments to Delegated Regulation (EU) 2019/807, which provide for a phase-out of the use of biofuels produced from palm and soybean oil.

It is expected that after 2030, companies subject to EU requirements for the use of renewable energy will not be able to count such biofuels towards fulfilling their quotas, Ukragroconsult reports.

The bill provides for a gradual reduction in the share of biofuels from palm and soybean oil that can be counted in energy consumption: to 71.4% in 2025, 42.8% in 2027, and 14.3% in 2029. Starting in 2030, only rapeseed oil will be eligible for quotas.

Some EU countries, including France, the Netherlands and Germany, have already moved ahead of the proposed schedule and have excluded palm oil biofuels from their national programs as early as 2023. The European Commission's new proposals aim to unify approaches to biofuel regulation across the EU.

The reason for including soybean oil in the list of raw materials, the use of which is planned to be gradually reduced, was the European Commission's report on the global expansion of food and feed crop production, published on January 20, 2026, which examined the impact of expanding crop areas in areas with high carbon stocks, in particular primary forests.

According to the report's findings, palm oil and soybeans are associated with a high risk of indirect land-use change (iLUC) and are considered drivers of crop expansion and potential environmental risk, given the economic link between soybean oil and meal production.

The European Union continues to reorient subsidies for biofuel production to subsidies for the purchase of electric vehicles. The electric vehicle (BEV) market in the EU, after a certain "stagnation" in 2023 and even a decline in 2024, resumed active growth in 2025. If in 2023 the number of registrations of new electric vehicles in the EU increased by 37% to 1.53 million units and accounted for 14.6% of all registrations, then in 2024 1.44 million cars were registered (13.6% of the market), and in 2025 the number of registrations increased by 31% to 1.88 million (17.4% of the market) due to the restoration of subsidies in Germany.

In 2025, the share of registered electric cars in the EU was 17.4%, diesel cars - 8.9%, while the share of petrol cars fell from 33% to 26%, the share of hybrid cars increased to 34.5%, and plug-in hybrids - to 9.4%.

Therefore, the need for diesel fuel, and accordingly for biodiesel, in the EU will decrease in the future until 2030.