2. European Policy Landscape

The forest policy landscape in Europe is composed of many different policy instruments developed across the EU, national and subnational political levels and different policy sectors. They all aim to influence forest management on the ground. At the EU level, legally binding forest-related policy instruments originate from forest-related policy areas outside the forest sector. These include nature protection and biodiversity conservation, climate mitigation in the land-use, the land use change and forestry (LULUCF) sector, agriculture and rural development, bioenergy and forest commodity trade. At the same time, forest- specific EU policy instruments are typically based on soft law, such as strategy documents (e.g., EU Forest Strategy to 2030). This patchwork of legally binding and non-legally binding forest-related and forest specific policy instruments emphasize partly contradicting, partly synergetic objectives and practices for forest management. These include (i.) strict forest ecosystem conservation and ecological restoration, (ii.) carbon sequestration through forest sinks or carbon pools in timber products as well as climate resilience of forests, (iii.) multi-purpose forestry for timber, biodiversity, and recreation and (iv.) timber production and intensive forest biomass use for the use of bioenergy.

At the national and sub-national level, forest management is mainly and directly regulated by long established forest laws and newly emerging national forest strategies. In addition, forest biodiversity restoration issues are increasingly subject to national nature protection laws, biodiversity and climate strategies. While most national forest policy laws and strategies share a common ground in the support of sustainable forest management as their main policy objective, and regulate against a decrease of the forest area (e.g., mainly by restocking obligations after timber harvesting and compensatory afforestation after legal deforestation), countries differ in their forest policy priorities as stipulated in their laws and strategies, and implemented in practice. One cluster of countries (e.g., in Northern Europe, Eastern Europe, incl. the Baltic region) emphasizes timber production as the main forest policy priority. Another cluster of countries (e.g. in Central and Western Europe) mainly aim to support multi-purpose forestry for timber production, biodiversity, recreation and other key forest ecosystem services. A third and last cluster of countries (e.g., in Southern and Western Europe) puts a priority on the ecosystem management of forests for biodiversity, water, recreation and non-wood forest products.