(...) What is the Commission doing to combat illegal timber products to appear on the EU market?
The Commission is actively working with developing countries that produce timber for the EU market to ensure that they have the system and capacity in place to tackle illegal logging. The Forest Law Enforcement, Governance and Trade (FLEGT) Action Plan is a top priority for the EU. It dates back to 2003. The Regulation was adopted in 2005, and the Commission started the first Voluntary Partnership Agreement (VPA) negotiations in 2006. Negotiations of VPAs take time. They rely on a wide consultation process on sensitive issues, such as land tenure, governance, transparency and accountability. There is now one agreement ratified (with Ghana), two in ratification process (with the Republic of Congo and Cameroon), five under negotiation (Malaysia, Indonesia, Central African Republic, Liberia and Gabon) and a number of countries have expressed their interest for entering into negotiations.
The Commission is actively working with developing countries that produce timber for the EU market to ensure that they have the system and capacity in place to tackle illegal logging. The Forest Law Enforcement, Governance and Trade (FLEGT) Action Plan is a top priority for the EU. It dates back to 2003. The Regulation was adopted in 2005, and the Commission started the first Voluntary Partnership Agreement (VPA) negotiations in 2006. Negotiations of VPAs take time. They rely on a wide consultation process on sensitive issues, such as land tenure, governance, transparency and accountability. There is now one agreement ratified (with Ghana), two in ratification process (with the Republic of Congo and Cameroon), five under negotiation (Malaysia, Indonesia, Central African Republic, Liberia and Gabon) and a number of countries have expressed their interest for entering into negotiations.
However, VPAs are not likely to cover all countries from whom we import timber, and our partner countries are concerned about unfair competition with those who continue to trade unknown sources of timber product. Hence the Commission proposed legislation in October 2008 to change business behaviour and to stop our indiscriminate consumption of forest products. The "Due Diligence" Regulation voted last week in the European Parliament and now under consideration by the Council will prevent the EU acting as a market for illegally harvested timber as it will require EU operators to trade in timber only from known legal sources. This coupled with the already enacted US legislation which has a similar purpose will send an important signal worldwide and encourage more timber producing countries to establish systems to verify legal compliance. (...)
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