The German branch of the environmental association WWF lodged a complaint against Germany with the EU Commission on Wednesday. The accusation: Germany is failing to implement the European Timber Trade Regulation (EUTR) – and thus ultimately to combat the trade in illegally felled timber.
If trees are felled without a plan, without a strategy for sustainability in order to earn money with the trunks, the forests and thus the climate of the entire planet will suffer. Between 15 and 30 percent of the timber traded worldwide came from illegally felled trees, according to a report by Interpol and the United Nations Environment Organization (UNEP) in 2012. According to this, 50 to 90 percent of wood from tropical countries in South America, Africa and Southeast Asia comes from illegal logging.
To prevent the trade in illegal wood, the EUTR came into force in the European Union in 2013. It obliges companies to understand where their wood comes from. Anyone who intentionally or negligently imports illegally felled timber into the EU is now threatened with fines.
However, the individual EU member states have a lot of leeway in how they implement and control the EUTR in national law. And according to the WWF, Germany doesn’t look good there. Johannes Zahnen checks for the WWF whether the EUTR actually curbs the trade in illegally felled timber in Europe. And comes to the conclusion: the controls were not enough, the penalties were not deterring.
Violations come to light, but the penalties are low
“With the current number of inspections, it takes arithmetically 200 years until all companies involved in the timber trade in Germany have been inspected,” says the carpenter and environmental engineer Zahnen, who is responsible for wood and paper at WWF. In this country, the EUTR was implemented through a reform of the Timber Trade Safety Act (HolzSiG). The Federal Agency for Agriculture and Food, or BLE for short, is responsible for monitoring companies that trade in imported wood in Germany.
According to its own information, the BLE has 15 employees for on-site inspections. However, they do not only have to carry out wood checks. Since 2018, the agency’s employees have carried out 766 audits at 719 companies and found deviations in 372 cases. Administrative offense proceedings were initiated in 39 cases. For comparison: According to the authority, around 25,000 companies import EUTR-relevant goods, with more than 80 percent of the value of goods being imported by only 450 companies.
Violations of the HolzSiG can be punished as an administrative offense with a maximum of 50,000 euros. In reality, however, according to WWF, the fines were closer to around 3,000 euros. “A cubic meter of teak from Myanmar costs 10,000 euros to buy,” says Zahnen.
He calls the EUTR a “paper tiger”. “A superficial show is pulled off” but the actual goal is not achieved. He hopes that the complaint to the EU Commission will lead to infringement proceedings against Germany because this EU law is not sufficiently implemented. According to experts, things are not looking better in other EU countries either, but rather worse. Ultimately, Zahnen is about reforming the EUTR and its national implementation throughout the EU. From the point of view of the WWF, the rules should “finally” take effect.
At the Thünen Institute for International Forestry and Forest Economics, Margret Köthke is an expert on the EUTR and its consequences. The room for maneuver of the competent authority is “very limited by law,” says Köthke. It is not the import of illegal goods that is a criminal offense, but the violation of the duty of care. And it is difficult for the authorities to prove that illegally felled timber was imported intentionally or negligently. Köthke sees the deterrent effect of the EUTR for companies mainly in the “threatened loss of reputation” for companies. It weighs heavier than a fine.
Illegally imported wood is also said to be used on the Gorch Fock
In recent years, Johannes Zahnen and colleagues have uncovered several shady deals with wood. The type and origin of wood were repeatedly declared incorrectly at the furniture retailer Dänisches Bettenlager. Courts imposed fines totaling around 100,000 euros. The basis for the judgments, however, was the law against unfair competition – not the HolzSiG, i.e. not the EUTR.
Or the thing with the German Navy’s sailing training ship: the Gorch Fock. Taxpayers’ money is said to have been used to purchase teak from Myanmar for the renovation of the deck. This was the result of research by the WWF and the environmental organization Environmental Investigation Agency. Due to the political situation in the country, the BLE announced in 2018, no legal import of wood from Myanmar according to EUTR standards is possible. A Swedish court came to the same conclusion in 2016. Even so, the BLE spoke in the case Gorch Fock just a warning.
A BLE spokeswoman explains on request: The BLE had fully complied with its inspection order, it had been checked whether the teak imports from 2015 to 2017 came from illegal logging. “Only in 2017 did the discussion about the EUTR conformity of imports from Myanmar arise.” As a result, the BLE checked all companies importing from Myanmar until mid-2018 and announced after “relevant findings” that an EUTR-compliant import of wood from Myanmar was not possible. Imports of wood for the Gorch Fock were prior to this announcement, the established EUTR violation was punished with a warning to the importer and no teak from Myanmar had been registered for import since June 2018.
And then there is the case of the timber merchant Wob Timber, which was heard at the Hamburg Higher Regional Court in April. It falls at a time when there was no EUTR. Johannes Zahnen was nevertheless involved in its unveiling. There were 31 deliveries of wood here, again they came from Myanmar, their origins were obscured. The court from Wob Timber collected three million euros.
The main defendant Stephan Bührich, at that time still on the board of the German timber trade association GD Holz, was sentenced in the first instance to 21 months probation and a fine of 200,000 euros. For violating the Foreign Trade Act. At the time of the deal, there was still a German embargo on trade with Myanmar. Would the EUTR, the reformed HolzSiG or the BLE have prevented the case if they had already existed back then?
An authority with an unclear role and its non-independent helper
If you follow the lawyer Lena Walker, the impression arises: rather no. When it comes to the implementation of the European Timber Trade Regulation by Germany, she still sees “clear room for improvement”. Walker conducts research in Münster on environmental due diligence obligations, such as those that the EUTR imposes on companies when trading in wood. She says: “The BLE has so far been rather poorly suited for control.” On the one hand, this is due to a lack of money and staff. On the other hand, because of the unclear role of the authority. The BLE also sees itself as a kind of helper for companies to comply with the requirements. It is difficult to advise, control and impose fines at the same time, according to Walker.
Lawyer Walker sees another problem in the leeway that the EUTR leaves to the individual countries. The legality of the logging is only judged according to the regulations of the country of origin. That means: If there are no requirements for sustainable logging in the country of origin, the EUTR does not make any further claims. It is actually about making the international timber trade more sustainable. “But sustainability does not play a role in the regulation.”