Tag Archives: EU

Illegal logging of Romania’s natural forests increases despite court threat – new report

New data show that logging of the EU’s last large primary and old-growth forests in Romania is continuing unabated

The data show that illegal logging has actually increased in one of Europe’s oldest and precious forests in Romania in the last two years, despite legal action by the European Commission against the Romanian state to combat it

The report, released by the NGOs Agent Green, ClientEarth and EuroNatur, identifies that the areas most affected by these illegal activities are the highly valuable forests of the Fagaras Mountains. Logging permits in these areas have increased drastically between 2020 to 2021, which has led to a significant deterioration of valuable forest ecosystems.

Following a series of complaints submitted by the environmental organisations, the European Commission launched infringement proceedings against the Romanian state in 2020, following it up with a final warning later that same year.

As the Romanian state failed to act, the European Commission issued later that same year, a reasoned opinion –a final call for the Romanian state to address the problem. This was accompanied by a warning to send the case to the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) if Romania did not take immediate action within the next four weeks. However, as the new report clearly shows, almost two years have passed and Romania has yet to comply with the Commission’s demand.

The environmental groups are calling on the European Commission to act immediately and refer the case to the CJEU – building on the ruling from the EU’s highest court in 2018 against the massive logging of Poland’s EU protected Bialowieza Forest.

“Unfortunately, nothing good has happened for forests since the commission initiated legal action,” said Gabriel Paun, CEO of the Romanian conservation organisation Agent Green. “On the contrary, our field investigations backed by data analysis show that in many precious native forests, logging has even massively increased compared to the time before the EU proceedings. We have submitted the evidence to the European Commission and expect a more serious course of this infringement towards sanctioning the Romanian state’s lack of actions,” added Paun.

Despite discussions between Romania and the Commission, the Member State has so far failed to take any effective steps to halt the destruction of its protected natural forests in Natura 2000 areas.

“The Romanian authorities seem to fool the European Commission. We call on the EU to urgently ensure enforcement of existing EU legislation in Romania. Anything else would be a fatal sign of weakness, not only towards Romania, but also towards other EU countries. Ultimately, Brussels’ inaction regarding the continued forest destruction in Romania jeopardizes the entire EU Biodiversity Strategy and the Green Deal,” says Annette Spangenberg, Head of Nature Conservation at EuroNatur.

ClientEarth wildlife and habitats legal expert Agata Szafraniuk says: “Romania’s persistent failure to act means the situation in Romanian forests has gone from bad to worse. Despite the European Commission’s warnings, Romania continues to breach EU nature laws by approving logging permits in protected areas of its forests without assessing the impact these activities will have on nature and wildlife. If the Commission does not escalate Romania’s clear disregard of EU nature laws before the EU’s highest court, the future of these important forests looks dire.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

Agent Green: Romanian court suspends unlawful logging permissions in Făgăraș Mountains Natura 2000 site

After a legal complaint filed by Romanian environmental NGO, Agent Green in 2019, the Romanian Supreme Court has cancelled logging permissions in more than 7,000 hectares of natural forest in Făgăraș Mountains Natura 2000.

For a number of years, Agent Green, has filed, at their own costs, many legal complaints against logging permissions issued by Ministry of Environment siting violations of national and international legal provisions, such as EU’s Nature Directives.

On November 29, 2021, the Bucharest Court of Appeal annulled the forest management plans for over 7,000 hectares of natural forest in the Avrig Forest District in Făgăraș Mountains, which are under protection by EU’s Natura 2000 legislation. The decision, though welcomed by environmentalists, may be appealed by Romsilva, Romania’s state forestry agency. The court’s decision puts the forests – where logging had been put on hold following earlier because of the complaint – under temporary protection.

“We made the preliminary complaint in 2018 and the court initiated legal action in 2019. The reason for our complaint was that the forest management plan allowed logging in two Natura 2000 sites, without any environmental and Natura 2000 appropriate assessment and because some forest parcels that were identified as potential virgin or quasi-virgin forests were destroyed and had not been classified in the appropriate category. A Ministerial Order from 2012 states that these plots must be preliminary classified in a strictly protected category until the area is studied and it is determined whether or not they are ‘virgin forests’. This did not happen and, tragically, some of these forests have already been destroyed,” Cătălina Rădulescu, the lawyer of Agent Green, explains. 

The illegal logging was detected by Agent Green investigators during earlier field visits. Forest destruction was in full operation although the area is theoretically protected by EU legislation – Natura 2000 prohibits deterioration of protected ecosystems and species that are in good conservation condition. It was found that there were no studies in place to assess whether or not the forests meet the criteria for ‘virgin forests’. 

Worryingly, the Romanian Ministry of Environment opposed the request to suspend the logging operations, arguing that the cutting of these forest parcels would not cause irreversible damage to the environment. Additionally, the Ministry called the ecological concerns “irrelevant”.

Agent Green presented evidence to the court that the approval of the forest management plan was issued in violation of laws because no environmental assessment was carried out during the development of the forest management plan. 

Only after the management plan entered into force – now shown to be illegal –  was documentation compiled that neither involved a proper strategic environmental assessment (as obligatory by EU Strategic Environmental Assessment Directive) nor an appropriate assessment (as obligatory by the EU’s Habitats Directive). Bizarrely, the Ministerial Order approved the documentation several years after the forest management plan had entered into force.

Logging operations in primary and old-growth forests in Romania’s Natura 2000 sites occurs without the legal requirement to conduct prior strategic environmental assessments or appropriate Natura 2000 assessments. This decision by the Bucharest Court of Appeal confirms that logging permissions that were granted without conducting these prior assessments are unlawful.

In 20201, the European Commission has opened an infringement procedure against Romania because of evidence of illegal logging of natural forests in Natura 2000 sites. However, the infringement proceedings have not progressed since July 2020 and forest destruction continues to spread.

This very case and evidence of ongoing destruction of primary and old-growth forest shows that the problem is not at all “solved”. Natura 2000 legislation in Romania has still major systematic enforcement problems and many of the most valuable natural forests in the EU are still being destroyed with the clear knowledge and permission of the state.

“The Supreme Court’s decision clearly shows that the Romanian government has been ignoring the EU’s mandatory legal obligations to protect primary forests and other natural habitats in good conservation status – as well as listed species and their habitats – in Natura 2000 sites. Unfortunately, even the recent legislative changes of the Romanian government do not comply with EU nature conservation requirements. On the contrary, field evidence clearly shows that the wide-spread destruction of primary and old-growth forests in Romanian EU Natura 2000 sites continues and has even increased after the European Commission launched the infringement procedure in February 2020,” Agent Green’s president Gabriel Paun underlines.

“The fact that the Ministry of Environment refused to take measures to protect these extremely valuable and EU-protected forests in the Natura 2000 site Făgăraș Mountains during the trial is unbelievable and shows that the government is not eager to improve forest protection. Therefore, we call on the European Commission to urgently continue the infringement procedure against the Romanian state and refer the case to the Court of Justice of the EU,” Gabriel Paun concludes.

The link to the decision of the Appellation Court of Bucharest: http://portal.just.ro/2/SitePages/Dosar.aspx?id_dosar=200000000369607&id_inst=2

EuroNatur and Agent Green: Glasgow Declaration on Forests falls short of saving the world’s natural forests

EuroNatur and Agent Green welcome the Glasgow Declaration on Forests as an expression of will of a large number of states including some major drivers of forest destruction to improve forest protection. However, the paper remains vague, the deadline of 2030 comes far too late and signatories – including Brazil, Russia, Canada, US, UK as well as Romania – do not give any details how the implementation will be tracked and how it will be enforced.

“Although the Declaration indicates a potential change in attitude of forest destroyers, it falls short and comes years too late. We cannot wait another ten years for forest destruction to be stopped, an immediate change is needed. Logging needs to end as much in the EU as it does in the Amazon. In many European countries, to a large extent, natural forests have been degraded and converted into plantations of low ecological value over the past centuries. Still, the few remains of natural forests are largely not spared from destructive logging, in particular in countries like Romania or Sweden. It is of utmost importance that the ongoing massive devastation of natural and old-growth forests is being stopped within the next few years. If loggers will get ten more years to operate, a large propoprtion of the EU’s high biodiversity value forests outside strictly protected areas will most likely be gone – a disaster for both climate and biodiversity,“ says Annette Spangenberg, Head of Nature Conservation at EuroNatur Foundation. 

“The implementation of the Declaration will be key. Similar declarations on voluntary action to protect forests in the past failed greatly. This new declaration comes after the 2014 New York Declaration on Forests which included the commitment of governments to cut forest loss by half until 2020. Unfortunately, the rate of natural forest loss and destruction has dramatically increased in recent years. Our forests need urgent and bold conservation action now – and a change in forest management from greedy clearcutting to close to nature management. Furthermore, EU needs to ban burning of forest biomass from its list of sustainable and renewable energy sources. Emitting woodborne CO2 into the atmosphere is adding massively to climate heating and is not at all ‘climate neutral’ or ‘zero emission’,“ says Gabriel Paun, President of the Romanian environmental NGO Agent Green.

The Glasgow Declaration focuses on deforestation, which means the permanent loss of forests, e.g. caused by converting land for agricultural use. At the same time, the paper, and thus the signing states, remain largely silent on the devastating impact of ongoing logging of natural forests all over the world. It is using the often misused term of “sustainable forest management” without defining the exact meaning. This however would be important as, technically, even the giant clear-cut areas in Sweden are still counted as “forest” in the official registries and clear-cut forest management is being praised as “sustainable”. Logging of ecologically mature forests results in deterioration of forest biodiversity and carbon storage, similar to deforestation and permanent forest loss.

Very likely, the EU’s forest industry is not going to lose any sleep over the Glasgow Declaration, which will most likely also not lead to an end to clear-cuts in old-growth forests in Romania, Sweden, Estonia, the US or Canada – where those forests are increasingly being logged as the biomass and pellet industry is spreading its business.

EuroNatur and Agent Green call on the European Commission and the EU member states to ensure that the degradation and destruction of natural forests in the European Union by logging is stopped immediately. Strict protection of all old growth and primary forests is also stipulated in the EU Biodiversity Strategy 2030. However, many of the EU member states such as Romania, Finland, Poland or Sweden continue to log natural forests on their territories – also in state-owned forests. This must be ended immediately. Signing nice-worded papers while at the same time actively pursuing the destruction of nature is hypocritical and unacceptable.

EuroNatur and Agent Green also call on the European Commission to accelerate the EU infringement procedure against the Romanian State to ensure that the destruction of EU Natura 2000 protected natural forests is stopped before it is too late for many precious forests and that the Glasgow Declaration on Forests does not wait another minute to be implemented.

Logs from mature forests are waiting to be burned in a biomass power plant in Austria.