Governments have claimed to be dealing with illegal logging issues intensively over the last four years and yet our evaluation shows there are barely any guarantees that public buildings and tax payers money in Europe are not fuelling illegal logging.

While the EU is asking for action from other regions, EU governments are failing to drive demand for sustainable and legal products within their domestic markets and with this undercut legitimate business and governments that have implemented responsible policies. This is even more disturbing in the absence of legislation which would prevent timber traffickers circumventing the currently negotiated Voluntary Partnership Agreements between the EU and key timber producing countries.

Governments have a responsibility to ensure that the timber they purchase for public works is legal and ecologically, socially and economically sustainable

• Austria was the only country that could claim that it had developed a public procurement policy which accepted the three pillars of sustainability, i.e. environmental, social and economic interests. 9 countries could point to some, albeit insufficient, procurement policies,: Belgium. Denmark, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Romania, Spain, Switzerland and the UK. Improvements in public procurement policy were made since 2006 by only Austria and Spain, while Romania, which took part in the survey for the first time this year have tightened up some of the rules in its public procurement in 2006.


• All other countries were unable to demonstrate to WWF any public procurement policies at all.


• Only Denmark was able to show that its public procurement is having a positive effect on its timber imports, albeit in a very limited way. This means that 26 out of 27 European countries surveyed (the EU Member States plus Switzerland) are apparently unable to avoid illegal and unsustainable timber being utilised for public works, even if they have a public procurement policy.

Most EU governments have made a political commitment in the ENAFLEG declarations to formulate a national action programme to address issues around forest law enforcement, governance and timber trade. The only country which has done this until now and has developed a time-bound national action programme with clearly defined targets and monitoring on illegal logging is Austria. Some partial steps towards a national action programme have been taken by Estonia, Finland, Greece Lithuania and Romania.

What the governments need to do:

• Implement a public procurement process which requires legal and sustainable timber, with monitoring and evaluation built into the process by an independent monitor.


• Reward companies who do the right thing through effective responsible purchasing policies which marginalise illegal and controversial timber.


• Put in place national action programmes with clear and time-bound goals to address issues around forest law enforcement, governance and timber trade as required in the ENAFLEG declaration.