Pretraži

This Briefing, written by the European Parliament’s Policy Department for Citizens’ Rights and Constitutional Affairs at the request of the Committee on Petitions (PETI), provides background information for the PETI Fact-finding visit to Romania scheduled from 15 to 18 May 2023. It investigates two main issues that were subject to specific petitions, namely the increasing illegal logging (petitions 1248/2019, 0408/2020, 0722/2020 and 1056/2021) and the management of the brown bear populations (petitions ...

On 17 November 2021, the European Commission tabled a legislative proposal aimed at curbing deforestation and forest degradation driven by the expansion of agricultural land used to produce specific commodities, namely cattle, cocoa, coffee, palm oil, soya and wood. Following up on a 2020 European Parliament resolution, which called for regulatory action to tackle EU-driven global deforestation, the proposal would impose due diligence obligations on operators placing these commodities and some derived ...

This study, commissioned by the European Parliament’s Policy Department for Citizens’ Rights and Constitutional Affairs at the request of the PETI Committee, aims at gaining deeper insights into the legal aspects of illegal logging and related trade in illegally harvested timber and timber products. It analyses the legal requirements and their implications for various actors in the EU and in third countries. The study examines the disparities in enforcement and penalties regimes in Member States ...

Biomass is a renewable energy source which can be used to produce electricity, heat and transport fuels. It accounts for roughly two thirds of renewable energy in the European Union (EU). Although biomass can come from many different sources, wood is by far the most common. Under EU legislation, biomass is carbon neutral, based on the assumption that the carbon released when solid biomass is burned will be re-absorbed during tree growth. Current EU policies provide incentives to use biomass for power ...

Free trade in raw materials is of great importance for the EU. China remains the EU’s main supplier of critical raw materials and thus concentrates on the most recent evidence on its export restrictions. Despite recent WTO rulings, China is still implementing a wide range of trade distorting measures in the form of export licensing or through the introduction of a resource tax. While we can trace certain welfare benefits for the Chinese domestic market following the introduction of export restrictions ...

The EU-Indonesia Forest Law Enforcement, Governance and Trade (FLEGT) Voluntary Partnership Agreement (VPA) was signed on 30 September 2013. It is the first FLEGT VPA the EU has made with an Asian timber-exporting country; VPAs with Malaysia and Vietnam are likely to follow. Please click here for the full publication in PDF format Available language versions: