European forest owners welcome the rejection of a proposal for regulation on a monitoring framework for resilient European forests by a large majority of members of the Agriculture and Environment Committees of the European Parliament. This sends a clear message that the concerns voiced by European forest owners over the last two years have been heard.
Among those concerns: the unclear purpose and actual added-value of the proposal, and the lack of consideration for financial and administrative burdens.
Moreover, there is no urgent data need that only this proposal for a Regulation can fill.
Effort on European forest monitoring should instead focus on reinforcing cooperation, technical support, and capacity building among national forest authorities, and support those few Member States who are building their NFIs, rather than on introducing a one-size-fits-all supranational regulatory framework at EU-level.
European forest owners sincerely hope that their concerns will continue to be taken into account in the upcoming vote in Plenary.
