1. IntroductIon
The EU FLEGT Action Plan provides a number of measures to exclude illegal timber from markets, to improve the supply of legal timber and to increase the demand for respon- sible wood products. One of the key elements of the EU FLEGT framework are the Volun- tary Partnership Agreements (VPAs), which
aim to ensure legal timber trade and support good forest governance in the partner coun- tries. A VPA should help to identify legal tim- ber and timber products in producer countries and license them for export to the EU. For dif- ferent reasons, up to now, only six VPAs have been signed with exporter countries (Ghana, Cameroon, Republic of Congo, Central Afri- can Republic, Indonesia and, recently, Liberia).
– L’Italia Forestale e Montana / Italian Journal of Forest and Mountain Environments 67 (2): 191-201, 2012 © 2012 Accademia Italiana di Scienze Forestali doi: 10.4129/ifm.2012.2.07
The EU Timber Regulation is a new piece of legislation approved by the European Parliament and the European Council in October 2010 and expected to enter into force in March 2013. It lays down the obligations for operators placing timber and timber products on the European Union market, with the aim to stop the sale of timber logged illegally in the country of origin. In order to respect the Regulation, operators must implement a system of “due diligence” to ascertain the timber they sell was harvested legally. As an alternative, they may decide to work under the assistance and control of a Monitoring Organization. The paper discusses the opportunities and challenges the Regulation might bear for the EU forestry sector, with special attention to the role that the Rural Development Policy for the programming period 2007-2013 can play in supporting internal operators. The impacts of the Regulation will depend from the contents of the secondary legislations that will be approved by the EU, as well as from the support measures that will be activated by the Rural Development Policy. In implementing the Regulation the experience gained by the Lacely Act in US should be taken into consideration in order to find a decent compromise between the need to reduce illegality in the forestry sector and to keep fair and balance conditions of competitiveness in the wood market.
Key words: timber regulation; illegal logging; monitoring organization; due diligence; forest certification.
Parole chiave: timber regulation; attività illegali di taglio; organizzazioni di monitoraggio; dovuta diligenza; certificazione forestale.
Citation - FlorIan D., MasIero M., Mavsar R., Pettenella D., 2012 – How to support the implementation of due diligence systems through the EU Rural Development Programme: problems and potentials. L’Italia Forestale e Montana, 67 (2): 191-201. http://dx.doi.org/10.4129/ifm.2012.2.07
DIEGO FLORIAN (*)(°) - MAURO MASIERO (**) - ROBERT MAVSAR(***) DAVIDE PETTENELLA (****)
HOW TO SUPPORT THE IMPLEMENTATION OF DUE DILIGENCE SYSTEMS THROUGH THE EU RURAL DEVELOPMENT PROGRAMME:
PROBLEMS AND POTENTIALS
(*) National Institute of Agricultural Economics, Contracted Researched, Rome, Italy.
(**) University of Padua, TeSAF Department, PhD candidate, Padua, Italy.
(***) European Forest Institute - Mediterranean Regional Office, Senior Researcher, Barcelona, Spain.
(****) University of Padua, TeSAF Department, Associated Professor, Padua, Italy.
(°) Corresponding author; diego.florian@gmail.com
Hence, the EU launched in 2010 the Regula- tion No 995/2010, also known as EU Timber Regulation (EU-TR), which is an additional measure that should help to prevent imports of illegal products from non-VPA countries to the EU.
The EU-TR was approved by the European Parliament and the European Council in Oc- tober 2010 and is expected to enter into force in March 2013. The EU-TR lays down require- ments for different participants in the EU wood supply chain. For example, “operators”
are all the organisations introducing timber and timber products in the EU wood supply chain, either through import of rough materials from non-EU countries or from forest operations in a member country (MC). In addition, the EU-TR also specifies requirements for traders (traceability), i.e. all the other participants in the supply chain prior to sale to the final con- sumer (Figure 1) (Proforest, 2011).
The Regulation will be applicable for most timber products commonly traded in the EU, except for recycled and printing industry products (e.g. printed books, newspapers, pictures and other products included in
Chapter 49 of the Combined Nomenclature).
These products were surprisingly excluded by the first version of the Regulation, but it has already been agreed that their introduction be considered at the first review of the act.
2. theIMPleMentatIonofthe eu-tr:
ProbleMsandPotentIals
In order to comply with the Regulation, operators must implement a “due diligence”
system, which should ascertain the products they introduce to the EU market, was harvested legally.
The due diligence system consists of three main components:
a) Information: the operators should be in possession or have direct access to information about the product and supplier, the country of origin and on compliance with the applicable forestry legislation in the country of origin.
b) Risk assessment procedure: each operator is required to have a risk assessment procedure which takes into account the information
Figure 1 – Key elements of supply chains of timber products in the EU.
Source: Proforest, 2011.
collected about the product and also relevant risk criteria indicators (such as prevalence of illegal harvesting in the country of origin or long and complex supply chains), as well as indicators of low risk such as certification or credible verification of legality.
c) Risk mitigation procedures: where the risk assessment indicates a certain level of risk that a product contains illegally harvested timber, risk mitigation procedures must be put in place. These procedures should be adequate and proportionate, and might include requesting additional information from suppliers and other third parties (Proforest, 2011).
All these components of a due diligence system have to be implemented autonomously by the operator. Alternatively, an operator may decide to use a due diligence system developed and controlled by a Monitoring Organization (MO), which are third party organizations able to provide a due diligence system to operators.
The MOs are expected to have the expertise and capacity to exercise monitoring functions, including the maintenance and evaluation on a regular basis of a due diligence system, verification of the proper use of a due diligence system by operators and implementation of appropriate actions in the event of an improper use of the due diligence system by an operator (EC, 2010). MOs will operate with the official recognition of the European Commission (EC) and under the control of Competent Authorities (CAs) assigned by every Member State (MS). The EC will define detailed guidelines for recognition of MOs.
In this respect a task force (formed by the European Forest Institute, Indufor Oy and the University of Padua) had been appointed by the EC to develop a Support Study for the Development of the Non-legislative Acts as Provided for in the EU Timber Regulation1. The aim of the study was to provide options and best practices for the use and recognition of third party organisations entrusted with
1 http://www.efi.int/portal/research/projects/?todo
=3&projectid=180
certain responsibilities in the framework of EU-TR legislation, and to find the best options for risk assessment and mitigation procedures in the framework of EU-TR legislation (EFI et al., 2011).
At this early stage of the implementation of the EU-TR it may be worth to address the following questions that can help to foresee potential opportunities and challenges the EU-TR might bear for the forestry sector:
a) Will the EU-TR represent a new non-tariff barrier? And, more specifically, how will the implementation of the EU-TR affect the import of timber and timber products in the b) Will the EU-TR increase the supply costs for EU?
the EU wood producers?
c) Will the EU-TR contribute to establish new professional activities and services in the sector?
d) Which effects may the Regulation have on the development of forest certification?
e) How should Rural Development Plans (RDP) consider and adapt to the EU-TR?
The following paragraphs will try to address these questions on the basis of similar regulative market interventions and most recent sector data.
2.1. Will the EU-TR represent a new non-tariff barrier?
It is expected that the EU-TR will con- tribute to a decrease of illegal harvesting of timber in developing countries. Despite the great expectations on the effects of the new Regulation, it is always hard to predict how it will actually influence the illegality against which it has been enacted. It is estimated that the share of illegal wood in the overall import of wood-based products into the Eu- ropean Union ranges between 16% and 19%
(hIrschberger, 2008). Thus, we may expect that the Regulation will have a relevant ef- fect on reducing the import of illicit timber and also stimulating the legalization of forest production and timber trade along the supply chain (in the EU and abroad).
As it was pointed-out in a recent discussion (UNECE/FAO, 2011), the EU-TR could be
also considered as a non-tariff barrier for wood exporters to the EU. Already in the past, different legal instruments regulating the trade flow of timber or other wood products turned to act as non-tariff barriers. For example, in 1990 the European Community adopted a ban on unseasoned softwood lumber imports from certain third countries to avoid the contamination and spread of the Pinewood nematode (Bursaphelenchus xylophilus). The complexity and severity of health and safety requirements, and the manner in which they were enforced, had a substantial and dramatic effect on softwood trade (cohen et al., 2003), as it can be observed in Figure 2, which compares Swedish and Canadian timber-trade performances for the period 1986 to 1999. The dramatic decrease of Canadian exports enabled Sweden to double its export of softwood lumber (from 1.3 to 2.8 M m3 per year) in few years (1990-1994). taylor (1999) noticed that the restrictions on timber imports strongly contributed to the restructuration of Sweden’s timber industry, which increased the number of larger sawmills and their productivity
Figure 1 – Key elements of supply chains of timber products in the EU.
(cohen et al., 2003)2. Even though the EU-TR will mainly affect the import of tropical timber, it will be interesting to observe, whether it will have similar impacts on the organisation and performance of the European timber sector. Much will depend on how “illegality”
will be defined in relation to some managerial problems of EU forest enterprises (e.g. respect of health and safety regulations).
2.2. Will the EU-TR increase the supply costs for EU wood producers?
The Regulation will be implemented also for wood and wood products harvested in the EU MS, and could imply increased supply cost for the EU forest owners, with unequal effects in relation to the scale of their activity. For an en- terprise the implementation of a due diligence
3 According to EU definitions, small and medium (SMEs) are defined as enterprises employing less than 250 persons.
In the forest and wood industries 99% of all enterprises fall into this group. In a more detailed EU classification, the SMEs are divided into micro (1-9 employees), small (10- 49 employees) and medium (50-249 employees) enterprises (Indufor, 2008).
system requires investments in internal organisa- tion, control systems and external consultancy, and can increase management costs and reduce the companies’ competiveness, in particular in the case of micro and small enterprises (MSE Again, depending on the definition of “legal- ity” in the secondary legislation developed by the EC (e.g., what kind of applicable laws will have to be consider by MS), forest owners may face different additional costs. For example, if fiscal and health and safety measures linked to logging operations will be considered, it can be expected that a high number of companies (especially in Southern and Eastern Europe) will have to make high investments to comply with the rules. In particular MSEs, which form the major part of the European timber sector, will be unable to implement a due diligence system autonomously. While, on the contrary, most of large national (e.g. the State forest enterprises) and transnational enterprises operating on the timber market already developed or adopted an internal due diligence system (especially if they are involved in a forest certification scheme).
This may also represent a potential advantage in comparison with smaller enterprises.
Almost half of European forest area is privately owned and the number of private forest holdings, currently more than 11 million, continues to grow. The average size of a public forest holdings is about 15,000 ha, while it is below 10 ha in the case of private holdings (MCPEF et al., 2007). This strengthens the belief that the extra costs that have to be covered to meet the EU-TR requirements may represent a significant part of the private holdings’ income. Therefore, it is expected that MOs will play a crucial role, in particular for private holdings, to comply with the Regulation: in fact it might be assumed that a small-medium enterprise will not have the internal resources (human and financial) to afford the implementation.
2.3. Will the EU-TR contribute to establish new professional activities and services in the sector?
As a consequence of previous considerations, the Regulation may represent both a problem
in relation to the increasing costs for EU forest owners and timber importing companies, but also an opportunity for the establishment of a more advanced wood marketing service organization.
Larger companies may have to invest in in- ternal or external human resources in order to strength their own due diligence (risk assess- ment) systems. On the other hand the estab- lishment of MOs (which, at this stage, may be considered similar to certification bodies or consultant companies) will represent potential new job opportunities for professionals spe- cialized in risk assessment, certification stand- ards definition and auditing or timber import brokerage. A large increase in the Chain of Custody certifications and in all the systems of wood traceability is foreseen.
2.4. Which effects may have the Regulation on the development of forest certification?
Another interesting aspect is related to the effects of the Regulation on the development of forest certification. Even though forest certification is considered among the most suitable risk mitigation tools (Proforest, 2011), some paradoxical effect may occur. For example, if a forest management certification implemented at regional level (and not to a specific forest management unit) will be considered equivalent to a due diligence control system managed by a MO, we may assume that the demand by forest owners for such certification system will be heavily affected.
The contradictory result is that a voluntary market tool could be marginalized by a more traditional command and control system;
a change that is opposite to the objectives declared by policy makers.
Despite the lack of specific data for the EU, the estimated industrial roundwood supply from certified forest has been constantly increasing in the last years, representing a significant share of the global wood market.
At the global level the wood from certified forests amount to 472 M m3 in the period May 2009 - May 2010. This represents a 10%
increase over the previous period (Table 1).
Certified forests are estimated to account for
26.4% of the world’s industrial round wood supply (UNECE/FAO, 2010). But if the forest owners will perceive that forest management certification is “undervalued” by consumers comparing with EU-TR license, we may expect that a large part of certified forest areas will not renew their label in the coming years (Figure 3).
2.5. How the RDP should introduce new measures in consequence of the EU -TR?
The EU Rural Development Policy (EC, 2008) for the programming period 2007-2013 has introduced some measures concerning the responsibility and marketing initiatives in forest management (i.e. supporting the application of forest certification) as a tool to improve the competitiveness of the forestry sector, (Axis 1 - Objective 1.4 - Measure 123).
Considering management costs and needed investments for the implementation of the EU- TR, it can be expected that the next EU RDP for the period 2014 to 2020 will introduce measures that can help forest owners and other operators within the timber value chain to adopt measures to fulfil the requirements of the EU- TR. Amongst such measures we could expect, support for creation of MOs, implementation of
Table 1 – Global supply of industrial round wood from certified resources, 2008-2010.
Region Total Certified Forest area Estimated Estimated
forest area forest area certified volume proportion
(million ha) (million ha) (%) of industrial of global
roundwood roundwood
for certified production forest forests from certified
(million m3) (%)
2008 2009 2010 2008 2009 2010 2008 2009 2010 2008 2009 2010
North America 613.2 181.7 180.3 199.8 38.6 29.4 32.6 232.5 175.6 194.6 14.6 9.8 10.9 Western Europe 166.2 84.2 82.2 85.0 54.1 46.5 51.2 173.4 238.1 261.7 10.9 13.3 14.6
CIS 835.3 24.6 25.2 29.9 2.7 3.0 3.6 4.3 4.9 5.8 0.3 0.3 0.3
Oceania 206.3 9.4 10.3 11.6 4.8 5.0 5.6 2.4 2.5 2.8 0.1 0.1 0.2
Africa 635.4 3.0 5.6 7.3 0.5 0.9 1.2 0.3 0.6 0.8 0.0 0.0 0.1
Latin America 924.2 15.0 14.6 14.4 1.6 2.1 1.6 2.6 3.6 2.7 0.2 0.2 0.1
Asia 571.4 2.0 3.0 8.6 0.4 1.4 1.5 0.8 3.1 3.4 0.1 0.2 0.2
World total 3952.0 319.9 321.2 356.7 8.3 8.2 9.0 416.4 428.4 471.8 26.2 24.0 26.4
Sources: Individual certification systems, Forest Certification Watch, Certification Canada, 2010, FAO, 2009 and authors’ compilation.
In: UNECE/FAO, 2010.
Sources: Individual certification systems, Certification Canada and authors’ compilation, 2010, in UNECE/FAO, 2010.
Figure 3 – Forest area certified by major certification schemes, 2004-2010.
Notes: Data cover all FSC- and PEFC-certified forest land together with land certified under the following large national certification systems: Malaysian Timber Certification System (MTCS), American Tree Farm System (ATFS), Sustainable Forest Initiative (SFI) and Canadian Standards Association (CSA). Data for national systems subsequently endorsed by PEFC (MTCS, ATFS, SFI, CSA) are amalgamated into the PEFC data and not shown separately after the date of en- dorsement.
training programmes, financing of consultancy services for risk assessment and mitigation procedures, establishment and maintenance of CAs at MS level.
3. othernon-euroPeanlegIslatIve
exaMPlestocontrolIllegalwood
coMMerce
Outside Europe, some large importer countries have developed specific regulations in order to tackle and limit the illegal commerce of wood and wood products. With the 2008 Farm Bill (i.e. the Food, Conservation, and Energy Act of 2008) the Government of the United States (US) enforced an amendment to a 100-year-old statute named the Lacey Act (LA) (USDA, 2008). Due to this amendment the LA extended its protection to a broader range of plants and plant products. For example, it declares as illegal to import, export, transport, sell, receive, acquire, or purchase in interstate or foreign commerce any plant, with some limited exceptions, taken, possessed, transported or sold in violation of the laws of the United State, or any foreign law that protects plants or that regulates certain plant related offenses (EFI et al., 2011). The LA defines as a plant any part or derivative product of any wild member of the plant kingdom, including trees harvested from plantations. Thus, majority of wood (and wood-based) products are covered by the regulation. The LA also makes it illegal to make or submit any false record, account or label for, or any false identification of, any plant covered by the Act. Illegality is defined with reference to plants that are taken, harvested, possessed, transported, sold or exported in violation of an underlying law in any foreign country or the US.
This means the LA applies to both international (imports/exports) and domestic (interstate) commerce. The underlying laws are limited to those protecting plants or regulating issues such as theft of plants, removing plants from an officially protected area (e.g., park, reserve) or other types of “officially designated areas”
recognized by a country’s legislation, taking plants without (or contrary to) the required
authorization, failure to pay appropriate taxes or fees associated with the plant’s harvest or commerce, laws governing export or trans- shipment, such as a log-export bans.
With regard to domestic sourced plants, illegality deals with violation of Federal, State or Tribal law, including State forest practice acts. Concerning imported wood, it is the responsibility of the importer to be aware of any foreign laws that may pertain to their merchandise prior to its importation into the U.S. The Act requires an import declaration (electronic or paper form4) for plants or plant products that includes the scientific name of any plant, a description of the value, quantity, and the name of the country from where the plant was taken. Currently, the declaration requirements are enforced only for all formal entries, i.e. most commercial shipments, while informal entries (most personal shipments), such as personal importations, or mail, transportation and exportation entries, in- transit movements, carnet importations (i.e. merchandise or equipment that will be re-exported within a year), and foreign trade zone and warehouse entries (goods entering the US under bond to temporarily store goods in a warehouse without paying duties and/or taxes) do not need to fulfil the requirements. The government is expected to review the implementation of the declaration requirements after two years from the entry into force.
The number of products covered by the LA has been increasing in four phases so that on 1st of April 2010 the coverage of the Act reached its current level, covering eight chapters5 of the Harmonized Tariff Schedule (HTS) and relative sub-chapters. In case components of the product would require declaration but the complete product is not listed in the law, the declaration is not required.
Different bodies are in charge for collecting
4 See: www.aphis.usda.gov/plant_health/lacey_act/
downloads/declarationform.pdf
5 Covered HTS chapters are: 44, 66, 82, 92, 93, 94, 95 and 97. For further details see: http://www.aphis.usda.gov/
plant_health/lacey_act/downloads/2009-09Implementatio nScheduleLaceyAct.pdf
and checking declarations. Electronic declara- tions are collected by the Customs and Border Protection, Department of Homeland Secu- rity, while paper declarations are collected by the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Ser- vice, United States Department of Agriculture (APHIS) that also play the primary role in pro- cessing declarations. APHIS shares responsi- bility for investigating illegal plant cases with the US Department of the Interior’s Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS). If federal inspectors uncover or receive evidence of criminal activ- ity, further investigation will occur. If there is sufficient evidence that the product is illegal, the shipment can be seized. At this point, the case may be referred to the Department of Justice and/or forfeiture proceedings may be initiated.
LA civil and criminal penalties vary according to how much the company or individual knew about the crime, as well as the value of the goods or shipment in question. If a person or a company knowingly participates in the trade of illegally sourced wood, or feeds false information on an import declaration, the following sanctions may be fines, possible prison, and/or forfeiture of goods. For those operators who have unknowingly committed to abovementioned actions, the sufficiency of “due care” determines the severity of sanctions that follow. Due care is the legal term for exercising the level of appropriate action that would be taken by a reasonably prudent person under the same circumstances to minimize the risk of purchasing plant products that were harvested or traded illegally. As a result, it is applied differently to different categories of persons with varying degrees of knowledge and responsibility.
3.1. Practical experiences of the Lacey Act Implementation of the LA has focused on the phase-in of the declaration requirements.
The amendments were passed in May 2008 and it was viewed as ambitious to have full implementation of the declaration by the end of 2008. A Federal Register process was introduced to gather comments from the public, and stakeholder dialogues were held
with importers, brokers and retailers, resulting in recommendations. Voluntary declarations were introduced in December 2008, with the requirement becoming mandatory in May 2009.
There is a phase-in schedule with six-month intervals, theoretically taking into consideration the risk and an importer’s ability to accurately identify a plant or plant product and the country of origin.
There is growing consciousness of the Act in the private sector. The general awareness among importers is high, although the understanding of the specifics is probably still low. However, there is a consensus that market opportunities for low-risk products exist. Discussions in relation to the LA have been going on concerning a number of issues, such as:
– composite products, such as MDF and fibreboard, for which it is difficult to identify the origin;
– if there should be a ‘blanket’ declaration system for major importers bringing in repeated identical shipments;
– the creation of genus-level categories where products may contain timber of many different species;
– how to declare hybrid species or recycled wood (recycled paper fibre has to be declared only by percentage);
– if ‘common food crops’ and ‘common cultivars’ should be subjected to the Act (currently they are exempted).
3.2. EU-TR and Lacey Act at a glance
The main difference between the EU-TR and the LA consists in the process the opera- tor is asked to follow. Under the LA, indi- vidual companies have to develop their own due care. There are not any clear guidelines or processes that should be followed, and it is left to an individual or enterprise to find the best methods for the particular business. The EU-TR has a prescriptive approach with a de- veloping process that needs to be met by the individual in order to comply with the require- ments of the legislation (butler and grant, 2011). In Table 2 the main characteristics of the two regulations are compared.
Table 2 – Comparison among the requirements of EU-TR and US Lacey Act.
EU Timber Regulation (EU-TR) U.S. Lacey Act (LA)
Goal Prohibition to place on the market Prohibition to “to import, export, transport, sell, (i.e. to “supply by any means”) illegally harvested Preceive, acquire, or purchase”
timber or products derived from such timber illegally sourced plants.
Illegality Focus on “illegally harvested” timber, Focus on any plant that is taken, possessed, definition i.e. timber harvested in contravention transported, or sold in violation of any law
of the applicable legislation or regulation of any State or in violation of any in the country of harvest. foreign law or Indian tribal law
Scope Timber and timber products being placed It applies to wood and wood products In geographical for the first time on the EU market imported by/exported from the U.S., terms: independently whether they have been and to those originating from the U.S.
harvested from EU forests or imported and being domestically traded.
from outside EU.
In terms Timber and timber products as classified in It covers fish, wildlife and plants. Due to 2008 of products: the Combined Nomenclature set out in Annex I amendments it refers to plants as “any wild
to the Regulation. Printed products to be member of the plant kingdom, including included in the next amendment. roots, seeds, parts, and products thereof, and including trees from either natural or planted forest stands”.
Effective date(s) Regulation entered into force on Approved in 1900, amended on 22nd March 2008.
2nd December 2010 Secondary legislation Effective since 2008.
expected in March-June 2012 Applicable from 03rd March 2013
Approach System based (and prescriptive) approach Fact-based (and reactive) approach Point of control Legality verification is done just at Verification can be done at any point in and traceability “first placing” stage. Basic traceability the supply chain.
requirements for traders on the EU market. Basic traceability is not explicitly required.
Tools Operators: exercise of DD, including Operators: exercise of due care, including a basic information access, risk assessment, declaration. Due care implies lower sanctions and risk mitigation through use of a system in case of infraction.
They can be supported by MOs.
Traders: identification throughout all the supply chain
Actors EC, Operators, Traders, Monitoring Customs and Border Protection, Animal Organisations and Competent Authorities and Plant Health Inspection Service, U.S. Dep.
(at Member State level) of Agriculture (APHIS), Dep. of the Interior’s Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS), Operators Penalties To be defined by Member States. They must be Civil and criminal penalties defined by the LA
effective, proportionate and dissuasive, and may itself. They might include civil and criminal fines, include fines, seizure of the timber or suspension forfeiture of products and imprisonment, of trading authorisation. depending on whether people are knowingly
engaged in prohibited conduct.
Green lanes Timber or timber products with valid FLEGT licenses or CITES permits are considered in compliance with the Regulation
Exemptions Timber or timber products that have completed Plants used exclusively as packaging material, their lifecycle and would otherwise be disposed unless the packaging material itself is the of as waste, as defined in Article 3(1) of imported item. Any plant that is to be used Directive 2008/98/EC of the European Parliamen only for laboratory or field research; except and of the Council of 19 November 2008 on waste for protected or endangered species
(by international or national laws)
Source: APHIS, 2008; EC, 2010; EIA, 2011; schulMeIster, 2011; TFT, 2011.
4. conclusIons
The forthcoming implementation of the EU-TR is expected to have a positive effect on the decrease of illegal harvested wood in- troduced in the EU market. However, at the same time it could be seen as the implemen- tation of a non-tariff barrier that will impose restrictions on wood imports from non-EU countries. This could have a positive impact on the restructuration of the EU timber indus- try, but at the same time it is uncertain how it might influence timber prices. Furthermore, the implementation of the EU-TR will require additional investments of timber producers to introduce due diligence systems. In particular in the case of small private holdings this could have a significant impact on their economic competitiveness. The EU RDP for the next period could be an important tool to facilitate the implementation of different aspects of the EU-TR and to reduce the adaptation costs of the EU forest enterprises. Effects on their in- creased production costs, on incomes and tim- ber prices on the EU market will deserve atten- tion. However, it is expected that the EU-TR will offer some opportunities for establishing new service activities within the forest sector, in particular in the field of MOs.
Finally, when implementing the EU-TR les- sons learned in non-EU countries, such as the Lacely Act in US, should be taken in consid- eration in order to find a decent compromise between the need to reduce illegality in the for- estry sector, and to keep fair and balanced con- ditions of competitiveness in the wood market.
RIASSUNTO
Come favorire l’applicazione dei sistemi di Due Diligence (previsti dalla Timber Regulation) attraverso il Programma di Sviluppo Rurale Europeo:
problemi e potenzialità
La Timber Regulation dell’Unione Europea è un nuovo strumento legislativo approvato dal Parlamento e dal Consiglio Europeo nell’Ottobre 2010 che entrerà in vigore nel marzo del 2013. Tale Regolamento definisce gli obblighi che devono essere rispettati dagli operatori che commercializzano legno e prodotti legnosi nel mercato dell’Unione Europea, con lo scopo di contrastare la vendita di legname ottenuto da raccolta illegale nel Paese
di origine. Per rispettare questo Regolamento, gli operatori dovranno implementare un sistema di “dovuta diligenza”
(Due Diligence) che attesti che il legno che vendono deriva da attività legali di taglio. Come alternativa, gli operatori possono anche decidere di lavorare sotto il controllo e l’assistenza di un’Organizzazione di Monitoraggio.
Il presente contributo discute le opportunità e le sfide che questo Regolamento delinea per il settore forestale dell’UE, fornendo specifica attenzione al ruolo che la Politica di Sviluppo rurale per il periodo 2007-2013 può giocare nel sostenere gli operatori dell’Unione. Gli impatti del Regolamento dipenderanno dai contenuti delle legislazioni secondarie che saranno approvate dall’UE così come dalle misure di sostegno che saranno attivate dalla Politica di Sviluppo rurale. Nell’implementazione del Regolamento dovrà essere presa in considerazione l’esperienza maturata negli Stati Uniti dal Lacely Act in modo da trovare un compromesso accettabile tra la necessità di ridurre l’illegalità nel settore forestale e la necessità di mantenere condizioni giuste e bilanciate di competitività nel mercato del legno.
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