Forest resilience and protection of forests

Forest resilience and protection

Forests increasingly face pressures and risks such as pests, pollution and forest fires, all of which are aggravated by climate change.

Making forests more resilient means helping them adapt to climate change and become more resistant to threats such as pests, droughts and wildfires.

Protecting forests is necessary to conserve biodiversity, ensure long-term productivity and preserve natural habitats.

EU rules on forests

There are several EU initiatives and laws in place to support forests. They include:

forest monitoring
rules on forest reproductive material
nature restoration
rules for deforestation-free products
emissions reduction from land use and forestry
forest strategy
forest funding

Forest monitoring

High-quality and comparable forest information is essential for:

monitoring threats and stress for forests
improving their resilience against risks
tracking progress towards achieving EU targets on biodiversity and climate
making evidence-based policy decisions and improving forest disaster prevention

Yet, current data on EU forests is scattered, incomplete and outdated, resulting in a significant knowledge gap.

With a new forest monitoring law, the EU aims to establish a high-quality monitoring system that collects and shares harmonised forest information at EU level, covering all forests and other wooded land.

The system intends to build on national inventories and reporting schemes, using a set of common indicators to ensure timely and comparable forest data and up-to-date information on natural disturbances and forest disasters.

On 24 June 2025, the Council agreed on its position for negotiations with the European Parliament on the new regulation (general approach). Both EU legislators – the Council and the Parliament – have to agree on the final text before the new rules can enter into force.

A magnifying glass focuses on a tree, highlighting its intricate details and textures.

Forest reproductive material

High-quality seeds and plants or other forest reproductive material (FRM) are crucial for maintaining healthy forests and for increasing forests’ resilience. They need to be genetically diverse, traceable and suited to future climate conditions.

The EU has adopted a new regulation to replace the 1999 Council directive on FRM, which modernises how the material is produced, marketed and used for afforestation, reforestation and other tree-planting purposes, such as conserving biodiversity and adapting to climate change.

Given forests’ long lifecycles and their high costs, foresters need reliable information about the origin and genetics of the material to ensure it suits local conditions.

The regulation focuses on two areas:

traceability: FRM must come from registered parent trees and be kept separate during production and marketing
quality assurance: competent authorities approve the sustainability of parent trees and certify the reproductive material

On 21 April 2026, the Council adopted the new rules; the European Parliament followed suit on 19 May 2026.

The date of application of the new regulation has been set to five years to provide enough time to adapt over 25 years of established national practice and to implement the new control system.

Nature restoration

Since 2024, the EU’s first-ever nature restoration law, which aims to enhance biodiversity in forests, has been in force.

EU countries must improve the state of forests through specific indicators that help to measure the health of forest ecosystems. This includes measuring:

the amount of deadwood, which provides a habitat for many forest organisms and contributes to soil formation
the number of bird species

In addition, member states must contribute to the planting of at least three billion trees in the EU by 2030.

The new regulation is part of the EU’s biodiversity strategy for 2030.

Deforestation-free products

The EU has put in place rules aiming to regulate the entry into the EU market and export from the EU of goods which contribute to global deforestation and forest degradation.

The rules ensure that these products and their supply chains are ‘deforestation-free’.

Deforestation-free products

Emissions reduction from land use and forestry

With the regulation on land use, land use change and forestry (LULUCF), in force since 2023, the EU wants to ensure that by 2030 the LULUCF sector removes more CO2 than it emits.

Forests play a vital role in reaching this target as they capture around 10% of the EU’s greenhouse gas emissions each year, making them by far the biggest carbon sink in the EU.

The regulation therefore encourages sustainable forest management practices such as planting new forests (reforestation), expanding forested areas (afforestation) and improving the management of existing forests to enhance carbon storage.

The regulation is part of the Fit for 55 package, a set of laws designed to help the EU meet its target of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by at least 55% in 2030, as set out in the European climate law, and to put the EU on the path to achieving climate neutrality by 2050.

Fit for 55: reaching climate goals in the land use and forestry sectors

Forest funding

Under the common agricultural policy (CAP), the EU supports forests through the European agricultural fund for rural development. Around 90% of EU funding for forests comes from this fund. The money is used for forest investments and management, including actions such as reforestation, increasing forests’ resilience to climate change and preventing damage.

For the current CAP period 2023-2027, EU countries can allocate funding for forest-related measures through their CAP strategic plans.

EU forest strategy

The EU’s forest strategy for 2030 aims to enhance both the size and the quality of Europe’s forests while improving their resilience to challenges such as climate change. It also seeks to support communities whose livelihood depends on forestry.

The European Commission published the strategy in July 2021. In November 2021, EU agriculture and fisheries ministers endorsed the strategy through Council conclusions that emphasised:

the vital role of forests for human and animal health, as well as for the natural environment
the role of forests in the transition to a green, climate-neutral and competitive circular bioeconomy
the importance of balancing environmental, social and economic aspects in sustainable forest management

See more

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