On 26 November, Europe's forest owners and managers issued a joint statement calling on the European Council (EC) to provide clear political guidance on the scope, objectives and instruments of the proposal for an EU forest monitoring framework. The appeal to the EC was signed by three organisations: CEPF (the Confederation of European Forest Owners), COPA-COGECA (the European Farmers and European Agri-Cooperatives association) and EUSTAFOR (the European State Forest Association).
Europe's forest owners and managers express their support for the member states' experts as they await further guidance from the European Council's Permanent Representatives Committee on the next steps regarding the proposals for an EU regulation on establishing a resilient European forest monitoring framework.
Throughout the legislative process, and ever since the Commission's first consultations on the proposal for possible legislation, Europe's forest owners and managers have consistently voiced concerns about its scope, added value and the instruments proposed. While Europe's forest owners and managers fully support the general principle of improving the resilience of Europe's forests, there are substantial reservations as to whether the proposal is a suitable instrument for achieving that aim. The collection of data on forests and/or the forest value chain should serve specific, clearly defined purposes for their subsequent use. Alongside data collection, questions such as ownership, disclosure of information and the possible further interpretation and use of the data to meet specific EU policy needs must be clarified.
The scale and frequency of monitoring must be tailored to the intended purpose. To provide meaningful information that makes it possible to track trends in Europe's forests, aggregated data on the state of national forests should be obtained.
The member states' national forest inventory institutions have long carried out monitoring and have built up the experience needed to collect the relevant data efficiently, and to interpret and analyse it in the local context. Likewise, the member states' national forest inventory institutions must remain at the centre of the governance of any future EU forest monitoring. This would allow the necessary local interpretation of the data and avoid costly duplication of existing systems. Rather than requesting raw data from individual forest units, member states should report regularly at EU level on the trends observed in their forests.
Furthermore, the harmonisation and standardisation of forest monitoring and reporting at EU level should not call into question existing national legislation on data ownership, sharing and disclosure. Europe's forest owners and managers stress that forest data, particularly spatially explicit data, may contain sensitive information relating to both private and state property ownership, as well as commercially competitive business information. This aspect of the draft proposal must be considered carefully in order to ensure appropriate protection.
In addition, to ensure that forest data is also collected and interpreted in line with the international context, the EU should align with existing international reporting systems such as FOREST EUROPE, ICP-Forest or FAO-UNECE, which already provide the necessary harmonisation and standardisation.
When it comes to quality control, verification, validation and interpretation of the data collected, it is important to involve well-established, experienced institutions at both national and international level.
Europe's forest owners and managers hope and trust that the observations set out above will help to find a workable solution for the proposed EU forest monitoring framework, and they are committed to building a constructive dialogue with all relevant actors in order to help shape an effective and balanced system.