How to Submit Your EUDR DDS in TRACES NT

TRACES NT is the EU system where your Due Diligence Statement lives. Without a submitted DDS in that system, your goods don't clear customs. This guide walks through the whole process, from creating your EU Login account to retrieving the reference number you'll put on your customs declaration.

If you're not yet sure what a DDS must contain before you file it, start with our field-by-field breakdown of DDS requirements first.

Before you start: what you need to have ready

Filing a DDS in TRACES NT is mostly data entry. The submission itself takes 20-30 minutes if your data is already in order. The preparation is what takes time.

Before you open the system, you need: your company's EORI number, the Combined Nomenclature (CN/HS) code for each product, the quantity in kilograms or litres, the country of production (not export), geolocation data for every production plot in WGS84 decimal degrees, a harvest date or production year range, and your supplier's name and address. You also need to have completed your deforestation risk assessment. TRACES NT will ask you to declare that the risk is negligible. You need that to actually be true before you check the box.

Polygon coordinates must close. The final coordinate pair must be identical to the first. For plots of 4 hectares or smaller, a single point coordinate is acceptable. Larger plots require a polygon. All coordinates must be accurate to at least 6 decimal places: a coordinate like 48.856600, 2.352200 passes; 48.86, 2.35 doesn't.

If you're missing any of this, stop here. A partially filled DDS can't be submitted, and starting the form before your data is complete just wastes time.

Registering on TRACES NT: EU Login and economic operator account

TRACES NT is at green-forum.ec.europa.eu. The authentication layer is EU Login (also called ECAS), the European Commission's single sign-on system. It's free to register.

Go to the EU Login page and create an account with your work email address. After verifying your email, you'll be able to log in to TRACES NT. The first time you access the system as a new organisation, you'll need to create an economic operator profile. That means entering your company's legal name, registered address, VAT number, and EORI number. The EORI number is what links your TRACES profile to your customs declarations.

Account activation can take up to 48 hours if your organisation isn't already in the Commission's database. Don't leave this step until the day before a shipment is due. If your company already has staff with TRACES NT access, ask them to add you as a user rather than creating a second organisation profile, because duplicate profiles cause problems at customs.

Creating a new DDS: walking through each field

Once you're logged in, navigate to the EUDR module and select "Create new DDS." The form is broken into sections. Here's what each one asks for and where people get stuck.

Operator details pulls from your economic operator profile automatically. Check that your EORI is correct before continuing, as this is what authorities use to search for your submissions.

Products is where you enter the CN code, a description, and the quantity. You can add multiple product lines to a single DDS. If one shipment contains both green coffee and roasted coffee, they get separate lines within the same DDS. You don't need to file two separate statements. A single DDS can also cover multiple future shipments of the same product from the same supplier, which is worth knowing if you import regularly.

Country of production is the ISO country code for where the commodity was grown, not where it was processed or shipped from. Coffee processed in Germany but grown in Colombia should show Colombia as the country of production.

Geolocation data is the section that trips most first-time filers. You can enter coordinates manually for small numbers of plots, or upload them via XML for larger datasets. The XML batch import follows the schema the Commission published alongside the TRACES NT EUDR module. Each plot entry needs an ID, a type (point or polygon), and the coordinate string. If your coordinates are stored in a GIS tool or as a GeoJSON file, you'll need to convert to the TRACES XML format before uploading. The system will reject uploads that don't match the schema, and the error messages aren't always clear about what specifically failed.

Risk assessment is a declaration section. You confirm that you have assessed the risk, state the outcome (negligible, non-negligible), and describe the methodology in a free-text field. If you found non-negligible risk and took mitigation measures, describe those too. Authorities can read this field during an inspection.

Uploading geolocation data: the format TRACES accepts

Manual coordinate entry works for a handful of plots. For any real volume (say, a coffee cooperative with 80 member farmers), you need the XML import.

The TRACES NT EUDR XML schema requires each plot to be wrapped in a <plotOfLand> element. The coordinate string for a polygon looks like a space-separated list of longitude-latitude pairs, with the first and last pair identical to close the polygon. Point coordinates are a single pair. Decimal separator is a full stop, not a comma. The system expects WGS84 and will not flag it if you accidentally upload coordinates in a projected coordinate system. The data will import but will be wrong, so verify your source CRS before exporting.

If your supplier sends data in formats like KML, Shapefile, or GeoJSON, you'll need a conversion step. QGIS can export to XML if you build the right template, or a developer can write a small script to convert. This is not a one-click process in most cases. If you're collecting geolocation data from multiple suppliers in multiple formats, plan for at least a few hours of data wrangling per origin country on your first submission.

One practical check: before uploading, open your coordinate file in a map viewer like Google Earth or geojson.io and confirm the polygons land where you expect them. A transposed latitude/longitude pair (easy to do when copy-pasting) will place your plot in the ocean.

Submitting the DDS and retrieving the reference number

Once all sections are complete, TRACES NT runs a validation check before allowing submission. Common validation errors include: missing CN code, coordinate strings that don't close, risk assessment section left blank, and EORI numbers that don't match an active economic operator record.

After passing validation, click Submit. TRACES NT generates your DDS reference number immediately. The format is: EU-EUDR-[country code]-[year]-[sequence number]. For a German operator submitting in 2026, it looks something like EU-EUDR-DE-2026-00012345. Write this number down. You'll need it at several points downstream.

You can retrieve submitted DDS records any time from your TRACES NT dashboard. Each record shows its status (submitted, under review, flagged), the reference number, and a timestamp. Competent authorities such as Germany's BLE and the Netherlands' NVWA can query all DDS records associated with your operator account, so the full submission history is visible to enforcement bodies, not just the individual records you share.

If you need to correct a submitted DDS (a wrong quantity, a coordinate error), you can submit an amended version. The original reference number stays active until the amended DDS is accepted.

What to do with the reference number: customs declaration requirements

The DDS reference number goes on your customs declaration. In the EU's Single Administrative Document (SAD), it goes in Box 44 under the document code for EUDR. Your customs broker will know where to put it if you give them the reference number in advance of the shipment's arrival.

The DDS must be submitted before the goods are presented at the border. Not when they arrive at the port. Not when they're in the customs hall. Before. If you're importing a container from Santos, Brazil, your DDS should be in TRACES NT before the vessel docks, not while it's being unloaded. Customs officers have the right to block clearance for any shipment where the DDS reference is missing or where the reference doesn't match the goods being declared.

Border authorities can pull the full DDS record from TRACES NT using your reference number. If there's a discrepancy between what's on the customs declaration and what's in the DDS (different HS code, different quantity), that triggers a review. Keep your declarations and your DDS records consistent.

After clearance, hold the DDS reference number alongside your shipment documentation. If you're audited within the five-year record retention window, you'll need to produce not just the reference number but the underlying data: geolocation files, risk assessment records, supplier documentation. The reference number is the index; the file behind it is what matters.

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