Before your first DDS
You need three things. An EU Login account (the Commission's sign-in system, with two-step verification). Your company registered as an operator in the EUDR information system in TRACES NT. And your company's EORI number: TRACES requires it when the declared activity is import or export.
When you register, you choose the role you will submit under: operator, trader or authorised representative. A company can have more than one. In each DDS you state which role you are using, because TRACES applies different validations to each role.
The Commission runs a test environment (ACCEPTANCE) that mirrors production. It is worth making your first statement there, with real data from a shipment, before you touch production.
What data it asks for
The content of the DDS is set by Annex II of the Regulation. In practice, the form asks for:
- Operator: name, address and EORI.
- Activity: import, export or trade within the EU, and the country of entry or exit.
- Product: HS/CN code, description and, if there is one, trade name. For wood, the common name and scientific name of each species.
- Quantity: net mass in kilograms, mandatory for import and export, and supplementary units where the code has them (cubic metres, head of cattle).
- Country of production and geolocation of every plot of land or establishment.
- Reference numbers of earlier DDSs, if the product was already covered by another statement.
- The declaration that due diligence has been carried out and the risk is none or negligible.
The geolocation file
You upload the geolocation as GeoJSON: one point per plot of up to 4 ha and one polygon per plot of more than 4 ha (for cattle, one point per establishment). When to use each one is explained in the geolocation guide.
TRACES rejects the whole file if it finds a single error, and the usual ones are always the same:
- Latitude outside -90 to 90 or longitude outside -180 to 180. This almost always means the two have been swapped: in GeoJSON, longitude goes first.
- Polygons with fewer than four non-aligned points, or with sides that cross.
- A point with a declared area of more than 4 ha for commodities other than cattle.
- A file that is too large: there is a maximum geolocation size per DDS. If you have hundreds of detailed polygons, split the shipment across several statements.
An example: a lot of Colombian coffee
An importer in Barcelona brings in 320 bags of washed Arabica green coffee from a cooperative in Huila. The DDS looks like this. Activity: import. Country of entry: Spain. Code: 0901 11 00 (coffee, not roasted, not decaffeinated). Description: "washed Arabica green coffee, 320 bags of 60 kg". Net mass: 19,200 kg. Country of production: Colombia. Geolocation: one file with points for the farms of up to 4 ha and polygons for the larger ones. Production: the harvest from October 2026 to January 2027.
Colombia is not on the low-risk list, so the risk assessment has to be done and documented before you submit: images of the plots checked against the cut-off date, the farms' land titles, and whatever you asked the cooperative for to clear up doubts. None of that is uploaded to TRACES, but you keep it for 5 years in case the authority asks for it.
After you submit
TRACES gives the DDS a reference number and a verification number. Customs needs the reference number: it goes on the customs declaration (in Spain, the DUA) used for clearance. Without it, the goods are not cleared.
If you later sell the product to another company in the EU, you pass on both numbers. With them, your customer can look up the DDS in TRACES and keep it in its records, which is what the law asks of downstream operators.
You can amend or withdraw a submitted DDS in TRACES. Every version is recorded, so fix a mistake with an amendment rather than submitting a new statement for the same shipment.
When the product already has an earlier DDS
If you export or declare a product made from a commodity that already entered the EU with its own DDS, you can refer to that statement by its reference number and verification number instead of repeating the geolocation. TRACES checks that the referenced DDS exists and is available. If the numbers are wrong, it rejects your statement.
By hand or through the API
For five shipments a year, the TRACES web form is enough. With dozens of containers a month, the time goes into copying data and redoing GeoJSON files. TRACES has an API for operators (SOAP web services to submit, retrieve, amend and withdraw DDSs) that lets you do this from your own system, once you pass conformance tests with the Commission.
Frequently asked questions
- How long before clearance do I have to submit the DDS?
- Before placing on the market or exporting, and in practice before you lodge the customs declaration, because the reference number has to go on it. There is no minimum lead time.
- Can my customs agent submit it?
- Yes, as an authorised representative with a written mandate. The responsibility stays with you. We explain this in the guide for freight forwarders and customs agents.
- Do I need one DDS per container?
- Not necessarily. One DDS can cover several products and several shipments. What it cannot do is leave out any of the plots the goods come from.