Currently, laws and decisions regarding directives are increasingly being made in Brussels. What will happen now that the EU has increased its ambitions to influence the forest policies of its member states? This is written about by Jonas Jacobsson, a Doctor of Forest Management Sciences and a member of KSLA (The Royal Swedish Agricultural Academy).

This is an opinion piece; the author is responsible for their own views and conclusions.

For many years, there has been broad support in the national parliament, the Riksdag, for Sweden's forest policy, the main features of which were established in the 1990s. Since then, state agencies have acted in accordance with this policy. What is happening now that the EU has increased its ambitions to influence the forest policies of member states?

Nowadays, legislation and decisions on directives are increasingly being developed in Brussels. Detailed issues are then formulated by representatives of member state experts. The parliaments of the member states then implement the general parts of the adopted laws and directives into their national legislation.

After that, politicians from the member states instruct their government experts to interpret the implemented legislation and other details of EU laws and directives so that they align with national policy. But Swedish politicians stand on the sidelines.

If we look at the Swedish Constitution, it regulates the foundations of the Swedish governance system. Its first article states: “All public power in Sweden proceeds from the people”. The fourth section states: “The Constitution establishes that the Riksdag is the primary representative of the people”.

In Sweden, government agencies are traditionally very independent; generally, there is an obvious reluctance to allow political interference in the interpretation of laws, directives, and technical guidelines performed by government experts. This gives government experts a disproportionate influence over the application of EU policy in our country.

A striking example of this is the implementation of the EU Habitats Directive.

In 1997, politicians, with the support of researchers, agreed on the fundamental principles for how to conserve habitats that were at risk of disappearing under economically rational forestry. This process was transparent and documented in the Environmental Protection Committee (SOU 1997:97). The Environmental Protection Committee assessed that 10% of the pre-industrial habitat area could be preserved in an economically rational but carefully managed forest landscape. Furthermore, 10% had to be protected by creating reserves or by some other means. Overall, it was concluded that 20% of the original habitat area could be preserved in the long term.

Ten years later, in 2007, reference areas for favorable conservation status were established in accordance with the EU Habitats Directive. The SLU Swedish Species Information Centre is responsible for the calculations and assessments. It is now claimed that 20% of the forest must be protected in reserves or similar areas. This is being done despite the fact that the SOU 1997:97 public inquiry report is cited as the basis, which concluded that 10% should be protected. Furthermore, the possibility of combining certain types of nature use with conservation is being rejected.

“Thus, the reference areas could be smaller if habitat types could to some extent be mimicked within the scope of usage. However, this possibility has not been evaluated and taken into account in the calculations.” (Quote from the report, translated into Swedish.)

Moving to 2019. Report from the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency to the EU in accordance with the requirements of the Habitats Directive.

Now the red light is on in the traffic signal, and based on vague assumptions, it claims that more than 2 million hectares are missing to achieve favorable conservation status. A compact, negative picture of the development of biodiversity in Swedish forests is being predicted (constructed) for the coming years, which the EU bureaucracy is taking up with demands to change forest usage.

In this year's budget documents, the Swedish Forest Agency is requesting a significant increase in resources to implement EU initiatives, such as the Deforestation Regulation, the Nature Restoration Law, and the Taxonomy Regulation, before they have been finalized and interpreted in light of Swedish forest policy. Swedish politicians have no control over the EU Habitats Directive, so the responsible state agencies have a duty not to interpret them unnecessarily or overzealously in a way that restricts the implementation of democratically adopted policies.

To ensure this, greater political influence over the work of expert agencies regarding EU legislation is needed. Can this be achieved without changing the concept of “ministerial governance”?
* In the original article, the author used the word “tauta” (people) when referring to the Swedish Constitution, which is explained in the text. Translated literally, this word in Latvian would significantly change the meaning and intent of the article.