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The Confederation of European Forest Owners (CEPF) welcomes the European Commission initiative to design a long-term vision for rural areas. As important feature of rural areas, sustainably managed European forests are of great consequence to achieve the goals of this initiative.

CEPF welcomes the EC initiative to possibly review the EU renewable energy rules in order to contribute to higher climate ambition as part of the European Green Deal and in support to the objectives of the EU Climate Law and 2030 Climate Target Plan.

On 22 September 2020, European Forest Institute (EFI) organised a ThinkForest webinar which gathered participants from science, policy and forest sector to discuss the future European forest policy.

European Technology and Innovation Platform (ETIP) Bioenergy, IEA Bioenergy and Sustainable biomass program SBP organizes a workshop series under the coming months with the theme “RED II Implementation and Beyond”. CEPF presented at the first event on 5 October 2020.

On 7 October 2020, the European Parliament gave a “go” to the AGRI Committee report on the new EU Forest Strategy. This plenary vote sent a positive signal for forest owners and managers and the 4 million workers involved in the forestry value chains.

“A new beginning for people and nature” was the theme of the EU Green Week 2020 organised on 20 – 22 October. The Week included several events with concerns on forests and CEPF was invited to speak at the high-level conference.

According to the European Commission forest fire report 2019 was the worst-ever year for forest fires around the world in recent history. Over 400,000 hectares of Europe's natural land was burnt and a record high number of nature protection areas were affected by wildfires.

“Partnership for protection of Bulgarian old-growth forests in Natura 2000” won the Natura 2000 European Citizens’ Award and “FIRELIFE - Hungarian forest fire prevention and training program” won the LIFE Award.

European Commission climate experts and national representatives have completed the demanding task of calculating National Forest Reference Levels (FRL) for the period of 2021-2025 for all the EU Member States.

CEPF reply to EC Roadmap on EU nature restoration targets presents the key considerations to be taken into while preparing the announced proposal on legally binding EU nature restoration targets and its impact assessment. 

CEPF's reply to the Roadmap on the new EU Forest Strategy calls for a bigger role for sustainable forest management and forest owners, and finds the scope of the proposed key objectives for the strategy too narrow.