Illegal logging

In 2005, the EU Action Plan received legislative support with the adoption of Regulation 2173/2005 (amended by Regulation 657/2014). The Regulation was based on the trade provision of the present Article 207 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union. It provided that the EU should conclude Voluntary Partnership Agreements with other countries or regional organisations. In these agreements, the respective partner country would commit itself to export into the EU only legally harvested timber or timber that was legally imported into the partner country, and to issue a so-called FLEGT-licence for each such export. No FLEGT-license was necessary when the trade concerned specimens which were protected on the basis of Annexes A, B or C to Regulation 338/97 on trade in endangered species, as in such cases a CITES permit or certificate accompanied the wood in question.

The import into the EU of timber from the partner country without such a FLEGT-license was prohibited. The EU Member States were given several means of checking whether the FLEGT-license was correctly issued. They could in particular ask for supplementary information regarding the legality of the export, and when this information was not supplied within 21 working days, they had to refuse the import.

Regulation 2173/2005 had several weaknesses: first, it only applied to trade with partner countries, thus with countries with whom the EU had concluded a voluntary partnership agreement, according to which the provisions of the Regulation should apply.