Recommendations to the European Union

NON-GOVERNMENTAL ORGANISATIONS AND CIVIL SOCIETY ORGANISATIONS

• The Commission should strengthen the wording of the EUTR regarding substantiated concerns by adopting a legal definition. The Commission should provide guideline or criteria concerning requirements for evidence from third parties to enable infringements. Give guidance if and when Competent Authorities are allowed to dismiss evidence provided in substantiated concerns.
  This process should include all relevant stakeholders, in order to share lessons learnt and discuss best practice, including on acceptance of results from wood testing from third parties.
• A stakeholder dialogue should be established at EU level to allow for concrete exchange between NGOs and Competent Authorities/the EUTR/the Forest Law Enforcement, Governance and Trade (FLEGT) expert group, in terms of sharing information and experience.

CUSTOMS

The Commission’s EUTR and FLEGT expert group should facilitate more regular exchange between agencies involved in the implementation of the EUTR (customs, police or others) from different EU member states to boost cross-border cooperation.

COMPETENT AUTHORITIES AND INVESTIGATION

• Forestry crime experts are needed at the EU level in order to better support and coordinate EU-wide and national initiatives in the fight against forestry crime.
• The European Commission should offer training sessions for national Competent Authorities and/or develop a training manual for the staff of Competent Authorities and other bodies involved in the implementation of the EUTR, focusing on how to carry out effective checks, how to undertake investigations etc., with input from external experts.
• The creation of a centralised EU database on seizures and offences and for information exchange for EUTR or FLEGT related offences and enforcement actions should be encouraged.
• The European Commission should offer training sessions for national Competent Authorities and/or develop a training manual for Competent Authority staff and other bodies involved in the implementation of the EUTR, focusing on how to carry out effective checks, how to undertake investigations etc., with input from external experts.
• The Commission expert group on the EUTR and FLEGT should prepare a guidance paper for Competent Authorities that specifies criteria for checks to analyse and better evaluate the risk level of products under the EUTR. This should also include criteria for (sufficient) documentation of due diligence systems in use and for showing compliance with applicable legislation.
• The European Commission should encourage and support EU member states in the adoption of strict and harmonised policies on gathering data on operators, ideally in the form of a joint EU wide register of operators and traders operating in the internal market. Such a register could include data on the size of companies, the countries of operation, the complexity of supply chains, the frequency of timber imports and quantities and value of the timber imported and placed on the market.
• EU member states should be encouraged to rely much more on forensic methods to shift the law enforcement focus from vulnerable forest-adjacent communities to organised criminals.

JUDICIAL SYSTEM AND ENFORCEMENT

• Training for judges and prosecutors should be carried out across the EU.
• The European Commission should carry out an assessment of whether the penalties set by EU member states are effective, proportionate and dissuasive and in accordance with Article 19 of the EUTR. A European-wide multi-stakeholder platform should be set up to discuss effective, proportionate and dissuasive penalties. The stakeholder platform should have regular exchange with the EU FLEGT expert group, agreeing on common guidance/ conclusions.
• The EU should develop EU-wide guidance/criteria for when an operator should be given a notice of remedial action, a penalty or otherwise and to help ensure penalties imposed are effective, proportionate and dissuasive. A first step to harmonise the approach would be an EU-wide analysis that assesses the circumstances in which a notice of remedial action was issued or a penalty was applied (context, type of timber/timber products, countries of origin, type of business, suppliers if known, etc.).
• European Commission, EU member states, the police, representatives from the judicial system and NGOs should further discuss and define what is acceptable evidence proving the illegality of timber or demonstrating deliberate evasion of adequate due diligence, possibly by using case studies.
• The European Commission must ensure that Competent Authorities establish greater transparency towards the public and stakeholders, as defined by article 11 of the EUTR. The European Commission should encourage EU member states to communicate much more regularly and transparently about enforcement actions, the register of checks and main infringements detected, e.g. via public websites, newsletters and press conferences as this helps operators to improve and sends a clear signal that the EUTR needs to be taken seriously.
• The development of rules governing the international timber trade should be ensured and overall policy coherence should be strengthened.
• The Environmental Crime Directive should be strengthened and include forest and fisheries crime.

ANTI-CORRUPTION, ANTI-FRAUD AND MONEY LAUNDERING

The EU should encourage systematic cross-over crime enforcement modalities in EU member states, covering anti-corruption and financial crime, such as linking the National Financial Crime Units and National Anti-Corruption Units with EUTR authorities to support the implementation of ‘follow the money’ enforcement operations, both in working groups and operational actions.

NON-GOVERNMENTAL ORGANISATIONS AND CIVIL SOCIETY ORGANISATIONS

Recommendations most relevant for producing countries

• (Re)create a context of trust to encourage witnesses and whistleblowers to testify.
• Provide guidance to CSOs on how to cooperate with law enforcement in a corrupted environment.
• Ensure adequate protection for witnesses/whistleblowers of forestry crime cases.
• Encourage CSOs and NGOs to team up and work with similar organisations as, when many voices come together, it is less likely that any one individual or one organisation will be targeted for reprisals or threatened.
• Train and provide guidance to CSOs on how to react if they witness forestry crimes being perpetrated.
• Encourage NGOs/CSOs to issue third party substantiated concerns in the framework of the EUTR and use other tools available.
• Use timber testing/forensic methods to provide reliable and additional evidence for court cases.
• Better equip and train NGOs so that they can provide “professionally” prepared third parties substantiated concerns to help authorities detect forestry crime.
• Authorities should help build the capacity of CSOs to participate in illegal logging identification, providing training in advocacy and communications techniques, investigative skills and improved knowledge of laws and regulations pertaining to key natural resources to distinguish legal from illegal activities.
• Support the establishment of a network of volunteers who could play a watchdog role in the process of identifying illegal logging.
• Raise awareness of forestry and law enforcement staff about why it is important to collaborate with CSOs and how to collaborate with them.

Recommendations most relevant for importing countries

• Provide further legal advice to better define to what extent third party substantiated concerns can be used in court.
• Use timber testing/forensic methods to provide reliable and additional evidence for court cases.
• Clear timelines for responses by the Competent Authorities towards third party substantiated concerns should be developed. Third parties who raised the concerns should be given the possibility to challenge the decision of the Competent Authority.

CUSTOMS

• Set up forceful wood expert units – use forensic methods to become more effective and network with other investigation bodies, transnational organizations or NGOs. Consider connected crimes like tax evasion.

Recommendations most relevant for producing countries

• Promote information exchange and improve cooperation between customs and relevant authorities in checking cross-border timber trade.
• Ensure that access to relevant customs’ databases is granted for the rest of the enforcement chain.
• Encourage and conduct specialised training and education in the field of forestry crime as well as prevention/fight against corruption for customs staff.
• Simplify procedures for initiating inspections before export takes place to reinforce and simplify the enforcement of the traders’ obligation under the EUTR or any other relevant laws addressing forestry crimes, such as CITES or anti-money laundering laws and improve the chance to detect offences of falsified/forged permits.

Recommendations most relevant for importing countries

• Create missing networks and identify counterparts in government administrations and authorities to ensure more effective implementation of EUTR.
• Develop guidance for customs staff on establishing and developing improved risk analysis for timber imports.
• Expand the EU-Twix14 platform model (currently used for CITES species) to cover forestry crime more extensively, including the EUTR and FLEGT.

COMPETENT AUTHORITIES & FOREST STAFF

Recommendations most relevant for producing countries

• Develop and conduct training sessions/programmes around law/EUTR enforcement and fighting forestry crime better to build staff capacity and foster personal motivation.
• Provide material used for the detection of forestry crimes (CCTV cameras, drones, etc.) and rely much more on satellite imagery to detect offences. Simplify the access to video recordings owned for example by municipalities, state organisations or companies/private owners of records.
• Better protect people investigating and uncovering offences, considering the significant risks they are facing while performing their duty.
• Increase salaries and have incentives in place for forest staff (people involved in managing, checking on or supervising forests in general) to stimulate the motivation of personnel, to reduce the risk of corruption and cheating and to reduce turnover.
• Make the process of recruitment of forest staff and management positions more transparent, stringent and fair to avoid conflicts of interest and political interferences in public administration and policies.
• Set up a dedicated inter-agency task force or working group that would help to improve pre-investigation phases in the forest to generate solid evidence.
• Introduce appropriate performance indicators for staff with supervisory responsibilities with a special focus on domestic operators, and require transparency once checks are performed and on the results obtained along the supply chain.
• Review the system of volume measurement to significantly reduce the margin for errors, possibly by digitalising and standardising measurement procedures.
• Amend the legislative framework where needed to prohibit inaccurate practices in making inventories of forests (such as concealing of actual forest stock) and manipulations in determining the yields.
• Carry out a comprehensive assessment of the pervasiveness of illegal logging and forestry crime to establish the state of play and to come up with tailored strategies to tackle it.
• Set up a shared database with compliance checks, substantiated concerns and subsequent enforcement measures (for example according to the EUTR, records of compliance checks are considered environmental information and should be disclosed without limitations).
• Better fund the forestry sector through the allocation of funds for forestry machinery, warehouses, road infrastructure.
• Promote policies and initiatives to do “better” legal forestry, more transparent and efficient, to help logging companies acquire environment-friendly technology, to increase added value of commodities so that people involved in forestry will pursue a rewarding legal forest activity.
• Improve sustainable forest management by providing education and information for all forest owners, including on nature conservation, existing tools for responsible forest management (i.e. FSC), as well as knowledge about forestry legislation.
• Ensure that health and safety laws/regulations to prevent labour accidents during harvesting activities are thoroughly enforced.
• EU member states should play an active role, next to NGOs, in raising awareness and attention about forestry crime and disclosing information on EUTR enforcement on a regular basis, possibly in the form of public registers or dedicated websites with data on compliance checks, substantiated concerns and subsequent enforcement measures, such as seizures and
• prosecuted cases.
• (BG, SK, UA) Implement or improve a centralised electronic wood tracking and evidence system for the planning, marking, logging, certification, transporting/dispatching and processing of timber. This electronic system would concentrate all the information about forest management (plans/volumes) to mitigate the risks of fraud along the chain of custody, including with possible manipulations of volumes during trade and transport, fraud based on paperwork etc. Timber would be monitored in real time.
• (SK, UA) Strengthen the rules on issuing logging permits and ensure its harmonised enforcement, with a special attention given to sanitary felling
• (RO, UA) Address the administrative fragmentation of the national forest fund without delay to ensure that forests are not illegally alienated and to ensure proper accounting and define boundaries of forested lands and rightful ownership.
• (RO, UA) Create an independent specialised forest guarding service composed of specially trained law enforcement people and ensure their prerogatives are coherent with the reality and complexity of forestry crime, such as for example through sufficient freedom and flexibility to carry out regular and unforeseen inspections.
• (UA, SK) Provide a clear definition of illegal logging in national legislation.

INVESTIGATION

• Set up forceful wood expert units – use forensic methods to become more effective and network with other investigation bodies, transnational organizations or NGOs. Consider connected crimes like money laundering.

Recommendations most relevant for producing countries

• Have a national database/online system with restricted access to relevant authorities only, including records of control results (according to EUTR provisions) as well as information on forestry crimes committed and the status of investigations. This should help to identify vulnerable national areas from the point of view of forestry offences and measures can be taken to counteract the criminal phenomenon. At the same time, it should help to map possible routes that are used occasionally by people who commit such crimes, facilitate the flow of information and identify good practices. The platform would also offer space for discussions on different cases.
• Develop and rely on a risk-based approach to develop control plans and prioritise checks based on objective and transparent criteria, with special attention given to large timber companies and macro forestry crime.
• Establish inter-institutional/unified procedures to make investigation methods and protocols coherent and aligned throughout the supply chain.
• Streamline and update procedures (reduce unnecessary red tape and bureaucracy) to shorten the delay between the moment the offence is witnessed and the moment it is reported for prosecution.
• Use timber testing/forensic methods to provide reliable and additional evidence for court cases.
• Better protect people investigating offences, considering the significant risks they are facing while performing their duty. Meanwhile, higher salaries and a system of bonus rewards could be introduced.
• Introduce more effective operational protocols to build and collect strong evidence to formulate the accusation and improve the access to technical equipment, including tools to perform checks more easily and carry out stringent investigations such as more satellite imagery, relevant forestry databases and GIS systems. Make access to photography or video records more easily available when relevant to help prove illegal activities, ensure sufficient capacity to process the information resulting from surveillance measures and assess the quality and completeness of investigative actions once over.
• Find ways to ensure that evidence collected during field investigations (and after) is reliable enough and actionable to formulate the accusation, to ensure that cases can make it to court.
• Adopt strict and harmonised policies on gathering data on operators, ideally in the form of a joint EU-wide register of operators and traders operating in the internal market. Such a register could include data on the size of companies, the countries of operation, the complexity of supply chains, the frequency of timber imports and quantities and value of the timber imported and placed on the market.
• Develop training sessions/programmes around law enforcement and fighting forestry crime better to build operational capacity and expertise and foster personal motivation of pre-trial investigation bodies responsible for detecting, investigating and recording evidence of a criminal offence.
• Appoint or strengthen specialised staff dedicated to forestry offences (such as a forest police) working closely with anti-corruption units, anti-financial crime units and prosecutors, spread across the country, possibly with regional or even district hubs.
• Enhance the cooperation between national and foreign entities involved in fighting forestry crime by setting up new platforms of communication (like interinstitutional working groups or task forces) that could promote the exchange of data/experience, as well as provide enforcing authorities with the capacity to perform joint activities (like inter-institutional/ supranational inspections). This should also ensure that there are liaison/contact persons designated amongst each authority and reduce the risk that corrupt officials in one agency block effective law enforcement efforts overall.

Recommendations most relevant for importing countries

• Provide authorities with a clear framework to help them in determining when a sanction should be issued and to define adequate fines to ensure dissuasive administrative penalties under the EUTR.
• Adopt strict and harmonised policies on gathering data on operators, ideally in the form of a joint EU-wide register of operators and traders operating in the internal market. Such a register could include data on the size of companies, the countries of operation, the complexity of supply chains, the frequency of timber imports and quantities and value of the timber imported and placed on the market.
• Create reliable databases at national and EU level to compile information on offences, prosecutions, investigations, known actors linked to forestry crime, modus operandi, operators known to be suspects, known trafficking routes and timber species most commonly trafficked etc.to help facilitate the dissemination of information, capture experiences and better orientate investigations.
• Reinforce significantly staff capacity at the level of Competent Authorities to carry out more and better checks on operators importing timber.
• Use timber testing/forensic methods to provide reliable and additional evidence for court cases.
• Encourage and support the analysis of actors involved in illegal timber trade and their modus operandi.
• Institutionalise cooperation between authorities and establish a strategy, protocols and standards on how the different nodes of the enforcement chain should detect and combat forestry crime and ensure counterparts in government administrations and authorities are identified.
• Share risk indicators of the enforcement between all authorities and organisations.
• When there is a lack of proof to prosecute companies/operators breaching the EUTR, indications of fiscal fraud, money laundering or links to organised crime should be analysed to open up opportunities to prosecute a company for offences connected to forestry crime.
• Compile and analyse best practices of the enforcement chain to help inform and refine the approach to investigation.
• Equip investigation staff with protocols or dedicated guidance on, for example risk profiling, or available scientific techniques that could support them in efficient controls and fraud detection.

JUDICIAL SYSTEM

• Fines have to be dissuasive.

Recommendations most relevant for producing countries

• Provide training on environmental crime, including forestry crime, to judges and prosecutors and ensure that people working at justice level are well informed/aware enough of the harmful and deleterious effects of not sanctioning forestry crimes.
• Ensure adequate protection for witnesses/whistleblowers of forestry crime cases as requested by the 2019 Whistleblower Protection Directive (2019/1937). EU member states must ensure a quick and adequate transposition of the Directive into their national legislation by December 2021.
• Severe offences to forestry laws and subsequent timber trade require thorough law enforcement action, with a special attention given to criminal law measures.
• The focus of enforcement actions should be shifted towards large corporations and criminal networks, instead of small-scale loggers.
• Forensic methods in laboratories should be much more encouraged and used for court cases.
• Set up a working group and boost cooperation between judicial authorities and forest/customs/investigation agencies to identify obstacles in the enforcement of forestry crime laws (for example why most of the offences detected do not make it to court) and to come up with solutions for more effective action.
• Rely on criminal law more often to severely punish forestry crimes.

Recommendations most relevant for importing countries

• Administrative fines should not be overlooked by authorities as a tool for effective and dissuasive sanctioning.
• Train more prosecutors and judges to ensure that they are more specialised in environmental crimes, and specifically on forestry crime.
• Increase the use of official communication channels, which would strengthen the evidence in judicial proceedings.

LEGISLATURE

Recommendations most relevant for producing countries

• Establish more severe penalties and sanctions for forestry crimes.
• The legislative framework should be stricter (zero tolerance for illegal logging) and sanctions depending on the severity of the breach should be implemented.
• Analyse the existing forest policy and review/reformulate it to simplify and reduce the number of pieces of legislation , ensure that room is not left for interpretation and come up with more efficient, actionable and clearer laws.
• Introduce amendments to the legislation to ensure the protection of witnesses and introduce financial rewards, as a way to stimulate police and investigative bodies to investigate corruption and fraud linked to forestry crimes.

SPECIALISED UNITS: ANTI-CORRUPTION, ANTI-FRAUD AND MONEY LAUNDERING

Recommendations most relevant for producing countries

• Make corruption in the forestry sector a central focus for authorities and for training prosecutors and encourage the investigation of organised crime networks involved in forestry crime.
• Empower anti-corruption authorities by any means (including through hiring and training dedicated/specialised staff).
• Increase salaries for all forest staff and investigative bodies to reduce the likelihood of corruption through bribes. At the moment salaries are very often significantly too low.
• Determine laws and protocols so that corruption, nepotism and the involvement and interference of politicians in the forest business, administrations and policies is largely reduced.
• Stop political nomination of representatives of supervisory authorities.
• Increase transparency to make sure contracts and tenders related to forestry activities are won honestly and not through bribes or political contacts.
• Increase institutional cooperation between authorities for a better penetration of the criminal environment.
• Better access to information.
• Independent control bodies should consist of representatives from different expert institutions.
• Ensure that people are condemned for high-level corruption to help raise awareness of awareness of this issue amongst civil society.
• Conduct public awareness campaigns.
• Define a proper and reliable method of calculation of financial losses caused by forestry crime to assess the pervasiveness of the issue and define an associated strategy to tackle this.

Recommendations most relevant for importing countries

• Public communication about environmental crime, corruption and fraud is crucial to increase political awareness and increase resourcing and funding.
• Government officials have an active role to play in communication.