Policy recommendations

  • The European Commission should adopt legislation which requires that only legally-harvested timber and timber products coming from legal sources and responsibly-managed forests be placed on the European market. Legislation should be cost-effective, fair and enforceable and should include sanctions. The primary responsibility for proving legality should rest with all companies that are importing or selling products in the EU, thus creating a level playing field and being WTO-compatible.
  • The European Commission should strengthen the FLEGT-process of supporting wood producing countries to improve forest law enforcement, tackle corruption and promote socially and environmentally responsible forest management.
  • The EU should enlarge the number of Voluntary Partnership Agreements with producing countries. A participatory multi-stakeholder process, including local communities and indigenous peoples, should be at the core of these VPAs.
  • The EU should broaden the range of products covered by VPAs to cover all timber products. 
  • The EU Member States should speed up the implementation of sustainable public procurement for wood products including social and environmental criteria. 
  • The European Commission should endeavour to bring best practices in EU countries together and give clear guidance to Member States on how they can implement sustainable procurement by developing guidelines and tools to include social and environmental criteria in public procurement.

Case: Illegal Logging

21-01-2009 Illegal logging: New proposal focusing on the EU market

Last October, the European Commission presented a new proposal aiming to establish new conditions for placing timber products from third countries on the European market. This new initiative places, once more, the issue of illegal logging on the agenda of the European Parliament. 

The ENVI Committee (on environment, public health and food safety) is appointed as the lead committee responsible for drafting the European Parliament´s response to this new initiative. Both the Development and International Trade Committees of the European Parliament are asked to draft an opinion, presenting their points of view.

The EU Coherence Programme formulated a case study on illegal logging last year, in this case study policy recommendations were given concerning the issue of illegal logging. The most urging recommendations included; a stronger focus on the support for wood producing countries with the aim to improve forest law enforcement, tackle corruption and to promote socially and environmentally responsible forest management. Also, more voluntary partnership agreements (VPAs) should be concluded with producing countries.

The new Commission proposal however, does not focus at all on capacity building concerning law enforcement in the producing countries and on increasing the number of VPAs. On the contrary, the Commission focuses purely on market entrance. This in itself might be part of the solution, as the measures proposed would force producers to take the compulsory standards which the EU has set into account. The EU Coherence Programme is convinced that excluding access to the European market in itself will not put a halt to illegal logging practices. The EU should also keep an eye on what is happening in the producing countries in order to make the control systems irrefutable.

The current formulation of the definitions, the monitoring measures, records of checks, penalties and reporting systems in the Commission proposal are still rather vague and are certainly not convincing. The EU Coherence Programme therefore encourages the parliamentary committees involved in the decision making procedure to table more ambitious propositions, in order to make the Commission proposal stronger and less toothless. 

In the past. the EU has already recognized the seriousness and the complexity of the problem of illegal logging. In 2002, the FLEGT (Forest Law Enforcement Action Plan) was adopted as part of the EUs response to a call for action at the world summit on sustainable development. The FLEGT plan incorporates voluntary partnership agreements (VPAs) with producer countries, in order to get a better hold on the trade in timber. Besides this, the FLEGT plan also examined the member states legislation regarding illegal logging, and provided an incentive to the private sector to take further initiatives with the aim of excluding illegal timber from entering the market.

Now, 5 years later, illegal logging is still a great problem in many developing countries. Illegally produced timber is, despite an attempt to establish better certification and controls, still entering the EU market. The initiatives undertaken on the basis of FLEGT unfortunately do not suffice. Therefore, the European Commission came up with a new proposal. This time, the initiative focuses purely on the operators who are placing the timber products on the EU market.

After the FLEGT agreement had been adopted and implemented, Fair Politics EU, in a case study, acknowledged that the EU is indeed making an effort to work towards a timber trade policy that is coherent with development policies. It has put sustainable development, deforestation, biodiversity loss, climate change and poverty on its policy agenda, and has tried to incorporate them into the FLEGT plan. However, the implementation of FLEGT so far has not shown to make a decisive difference.

By logging in protected areas or outside of allowed quotas, by producing the logs without acquiring licenses, or by exporting timber without paying export duties, certain timber producing companies are able to generate great profits for themselves. Illegal logging and global trade in illegal timber are therefore key threats to forest and biodiversity in developing countries. Firstly, illegal logging in itself has severe environmental and social impacts, because producers often disregard sustainability criteria. This leads, often, to deforestation and to problems for indigenous peoples, who depend on their forests for their livelihoods. Moreover, Illegal logging often deprives the governments of some of the poorest countries in the world of income generated through levies and duties.

In The Procedure File you will find; the overview of the decision making procedure and the links to the Commission Communication and the ENVI draft report.

For more information on illegal logging, please click on the case study link at the right.