Wrong coordinate system: EUDR files must be WGS 84 longitude/latitude

The EU Information System reads plot coordinates in one coordinate system only: WGS 84 (EPSG:4326), in decimal degrees. Coordinates in metres, or from a national grid, are not converted for you.

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What the EU documentation says

The GeoJSON File Description says GeoJSON uses the World Geodetic System 1984 (WGS 84) datum with longitude and latitude in decimal degrees, and that the first production version of the system supports that standard exclusively. If your coordinates are in another system, they must be converted to WGS 84 (EPSG:4326) before upload. Support for other systems is "deferred for future versions". The same rules apply to the web interface and to the API.

Coordinates must also be in range: latitude between -90 and 90, longitude between -180 and 180. An "invalid coordinate range" is one of the common errors the EU page lists, and the Validation Rules require latitude and longitude values to be in range.

How to recognize the problem

• Large numbers, like [512340.25, 732118.90]. These are projected coordinates in metres (for example a UTM zone or a national grid), not degrees.
• A crs member at the top of the file naming something other than WGS 84, often left by GIS software.
• Points at 0,0, in the Gulf of Guinea. That usually means a GPS fix that failed and wrote zeros, not a real plot.
• Values over 90 in the latitude position. Sometimes that's a projection problem; sometimes it's swapped coordinates.

How to fix it

1. Find out which coordinate system the data was collected or stored in. Your mapping app or GIS project settings will say.
2. In QGIS (free), open the layer, then use "Export, Save Features As", choose GeoJSON and set the CRS to EPSG:4326 - WGS 84. The export reprojects the coordinates.
3. Check a few plots on a map after export: they should land on the farms, not in the sea.
4. Remove points at 0,0 and any plot with missing coordinates, and re-collect those plots.

What the Plot File Checker does

The checker treats a crs member that declares WGS 84 as a warning and removes it in the fixed file; a crs naming any other system is an error, because reprojection needs GIS software. Coordinates that look like metres, or are out of range, are errors. Points at 0,0, NaN or missing values are errors, and unreadable ones are left out of the fixed file. The checker doesn't reproject, by design: guessing the source system could move every plot to the wrong place.

Why accuracy matters here

The EU FAQ defines geolocation for EUDR as latitude/longitude coordinates with at least 6 decimal digits (FAQ). Six decimals of a degree is about 0.11 m on the ground at the equator (estimate: roughly 111 km per degree × 0.000001), so a datum or projection error of tens of metres is far larger than the precision the file claims. Convert once, carefully, from the original data.