EU lawmakers cut down proposed forest health data collection law

European lawmakers rejected on Tuesday a draft law to monitor and report on "forest health", which would mandate EU countries to collect data on forestry conditions and enable preparedness against forest fires across the bloc.

The ballot revealed that the far-right and centrist MEPs predominantly voted no in the European Parliament, with 370 votes against and 261 in favour of draft legislation to harmonise data collection on forests and close knowledge gaps about the state of woodlands across the EU.

Tuesday’s vote has effectively killed EU negotiations, following the Parliament’s environment and agriculture committees' previous rejection of the draft proposal on 23 September.

The law, proposed by the European Commission in 2023, was meant to ensure that timely, accurate, harmonised forest data was available across member states, covering the condition of forests, changes in landscape — such as increasing pressures, fires, pests or droughts — with the ultimate goal of making them more resistant to cross-border threats like wildfires.

The Commission’s proposal built on the existing EU forest information entry point, satellite and remote sensing and national inventories, and sought to fill gaps in comparability and completeness of forest information.

Earlier this month, the European Environment Agency sounded the alarm on the declining forest biodiversity across the continent and cited forestry activities as a major driver.

Austrian lawmaker Alexander Bernhuber (EPP), who served as lead negotiator on the forest monitoring law in the Parliament's committee for environment, said the group rejected “ideology” and advocated instead for an “effective and efficient” environmental policy.

“The law, as proposed by the European Commission, would have significantly increased bureaucracy in the forest sector," Bernhuber said.

"Foresters, member states, and farmers must be able to focus on preserving our forests, but would have been buried under excessive paperwork. We will continue to work towards a more realistic and achievable approach to environmental protection,” he added.

Portuguese MEP Marta Temido (S&D) leading the legislative file in the Parliament’s environment said that “deliberate blindness” would not help Europe achieve its climate and biodiversity targets.

“By rejecting obligations for geo-referenced satellite data on tree cover loss and forest degradation or data sharing, the EPP has made early detection of threats almost impossible,” said Temido, adding the political groups that backed the rejection were “irresponsible” in the face of increasing wildfires, droughts, and other extremes hitting Europeans harder every summer.

Proposal to be rescuscitated?

On the sidelines of the Environment Council in Luxembourg on Tuesday, Danish Environment Minister Magnus Heunicke was asked whether the EU Council, currently presided over by Denmark, would intervene to resuscitate the legislative file.

"The EU needs to put in strong policies and concrete actions (...) It should be done in a way that isn't overloading small businesses with paperwork and that's what we are going to discuss," Heunicke told reporters.

Riccardo Gambini, forest and bioenergy policy officer at the NGO BirdLife Europe, regretted the Parliament’s rejection, noting that the bloc is facing “ecological collapse”.

“Legislators are recklessly ignoring science and leaving forests open to exploitation for the profit of a few. Foresters, rural communities, and cities will suffer as floods, droughts, and heatwaves grow more frequent and resilience fades,” said Gambini.

Kelsey Perlman, a forest campaigner at the Brussels-based NGO Fern, said the Parliament discarded a "huge opportunity" to improve forest resilience.

“It’s taken years for the EU to even consider sensible forest monitoring rules – years during which a third of its forests have declined in health. When showing where trees are being harvested becomes too politically threatening, we’ve moved from policymaking based on hard evidence to those based on wilful ignorance,” concluded Perlman.

Forest owners opposed the Commission’s proposal from the outset, citing its "unclear added value" and overlap with existing systems.

“Effort on European forest monitoring should instead focus on reinforcing cooperation, technical support, and capacity building among national forest authorities ... rather than on introducing a one-size-fits-all supranational regulatory framework at EU-level,” stated the Confederation of European Forest Owners (CEPF), following the first rejection from the Parliament’s committees.