Who profits off of Polish wood? Lawyers' complaint to the European Commission
The ClientEarth organisation has filed a complaint against Poland to the European Commission. It concerns the issue of legality of timber trade in our country.
ClientEarth is an international non-governmental organisation which deals with breaches of environmental law. It also has its branch in Warsaw named Prawnicy dla Ziemi (eng. Lawyers for the Earth). On 24 July it announced that it had filed a complaint against Poland to the European Commission regarding the lack of control over the timber market in our country.
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The issue concerns the failure to comply with the 2010 European Timber Regulation (EUTR) on the legal timber trading. Any company wishing to sell timber within the EU must develop and apply appropriate procedures to minimise the risk that the timber comes from illegal logging.
ClientEarth claims that timber from illegal felling is being traded in Poland
As reported by ClientEarth, inspections of EUTR compliance took place between 2015 and 2022 only in 774 timber companies while their estimated number exceeds 8,000. According to ClientEarth lawyer Ranja Luszczek "unclear laws and underfunding of environmental authorities pose the risk that timber from illegal logging is entering our country."
ClientEarth is also concerned about the way Lasy PaĆstwowe (eng. State Forests, governmental organization that manages state-owned Polish forests), which are responsible for more than 90 per cent of Poland's timber demand, operates. Lawyers for the Earth organization cites a 2022 statement by the Supreme Audit Office (pol. NajwyĆŒsza Izba Kontroli) that the number of inspections of forest districts carried out in 2019-2020 was "insignificant".
According to ClientEarth, from 2015 until the end of 2022, inspections by the Environmental Inspectorate (pol. Inspekcja Ochrony Ćrodowiska) took place in only 92 forest districts. This would mean that almost 80% of the State Forests structures have not been inspected to meet the requirements of the EUTR.
Who inspects the State Forests?
The State Forests does not have a legal personality and is required to be financially self-sufficient. It represent the Exchequer (pol. Skarb PaĆstwa) in the management of forest areas. In Poland, as a result of nationalisation after the World War II, as much as 85% of them belong to the State. This is as much as 7.6 million hectares of land and nearly 24% of the country's area.
The Director General of the State Forests is appointed and dismissed by the Minister of the Environment. The latter also has formal control over the organisation, but the extent of this control is not specified in the current Forest Act of 1991 or in other legislations. This makes the Director General exercise a virtually unfettered economic policy.
The nature of the State Forests as an organisation is multidimensional. On one hand, it is responsible for "the use of forests as a tool for the protection and shaping of the natural environment". On the other, it has a de facto monopoly on economic policy in the field of timber production.
In May 2023 the State Forests published a financial report showing that revenue in 2022 was a record 15.2 billion zlotys. This is 50 per cent more than in 2021. 13.5 billion of this amount is the profit from the sale of timber logged in Polish forests. Lasy PaĆstowe spent only 63 million zlotys, or 0.4 per cent of its revenue, on nature conservation in 2022.
