Partnership for Policy Integrity and Climate Action Network Europe organised a conference in the European Parliament, on 2 July 2026. The event looked into the question: how can forests support EU goals on climate, health and livelihoods? We were proud to receive cross party support for the event, which was co-hosted by MEPs from EPP (Ms. Dóra Dávid), Renew (Mr. Michal Wiezik) and The Left (Ms. Lynn Boylan).
Forest ecosystems benefit all of society, helping to provide resilience and capacity for adaptation as the climate changes. In addition to providing wood products, forests provide health-giving recreational opportunities, store carbon, reduce flooding, regulate water supply, moderate extremes in heat and cold, and provide habitat for the majority of earth’s species.
However, the status of forests in the EU requires significant improvement. According to the European Environment Agency (2020), only 14% of forest habitats in the Natura 2000 network exhibit favourable conservation status.
The attending MEPs highlighted positive examples. Hungary now has an environmental ministry, the new government having established the Ministry for Living Environment, which has launched several initiatives: a moratorium on clear-cutting in protected areas, the restructuring of the management of public forests, and developing new strategies on the forest and climate change nexus. The Slovakian government has just adopted a new zonation for the country’s national parks, which significantly increases strict protection of forests. We hope that the upcoming EU Presidency trio, starting with Ireland, will amplify these positive examples at the EU level in order to encourage other member states to follow best practices.
Key policy take-aways of the event were:
- Management of Public forests should model leadership in strict protection, nature restoration and delivering wider public benefits (being about 40% of the EU’s forests).
- We can meet the LULUCF carbon sink targets! It’s possible that public forests may be able to meet them by themselves.
- We must protect the last remaining primary and old-growth forests immediately, because they are the genetic resource for the resilience of all forests.
- We must rapidly increase the uptake of Closer-to-Nature Forestry (CNF) in order to improve the resilience of forestry and provide more high skilled jobs in rural communities and throughout the value chain.
- We must reconfigure policies and subsidies to reward only high value, long-lived usage of wood.
More cross party discussions are needed in order to support relevant stakeholders (ecologists, foresters, civil society organisations) to deliver the full array of forest ecosystem services. Our event proved that cross-party dialogue is possible based on scientific evidence (see the keynote presentation from Alessandro Cescatti, EU Joint Research Centre, here).
Video messages from the MEPs and panelists
Ms Caroline Celis, Sonian Foundation
A detailed report about the event is available here
