For self-determined forest management - against an EU policy of paternalism!

Our forests, fields, meadows, pastures, rivers, mountains and lakes, our unique cultural landscape are the basis of life for the people in our regions. Our common home is shaped and maintained by farmers and forest owners with a great deal of hard work, diligence and energy. The outstanding condition of our forests is thanks to the centuries of responsible and sustainable work of our forest owners and farmers. In Europe, our forests secure a total of 17.5 million jobs along the forestry and timber value chain, with added value of more than 1.1 trillion euros annually (EU 27 incl. Norway, Switzerland and the UK).

We will continue to need healthy, vital and sustainable forests in the future in order to secure their services through our traditional, active and sustainable management for our common living and economic space, but above all for future generations. This applies to our domestic raw material wood as well as to energy, clean water, safety from floods, avalanches, mudflows as well as recreation.

To ensure that Europe remains liveable and valuable, decisions must be made where the responsibility lies - and that is in the regions themselves. This fundamental principle of the Union is summarized under the term subsidiarity and must once again form the basis of the Union's legal framework. After all, groups without direct responsibility for the people in our regions and without any connection to our forest management cannot and must not decide how we should live. In Brussels, regulations and directives must be used to create a legal framework that promotes freedom and self-determination and is based on exemplary regions in Europe.

We can only preserve our forests for our children and grandchildren if they are actively managed and cared for in the future. However, this is precisely what the current EU policy is counteracting by setting the wrong course. It is unilaterally geared towards hindering forestry and timber use and leaving the forests to their own devices. It relies on ideology instead of facts and on paternalism instead of trust.

This policy is doomed to failure. It is a disservice to climate protection and to the preservation of our liveable homeland. And in its one-sidedness, it is ultimately directed against the economic basis of life and securing people's prosperity.

It jeopardizes jobs, regional value chains and the supply of the most climate-friendly of all raw materials - our domestic wood.

It wants to combat deforestation in the world (EUDR) and is therefore putting the future of our own domestic forests at risk - by creating a "bureaucratic monster" that will slow down the urgently needed development and maintenance of climate-proof forests.

In doing so, it is endangering our homeland, our livelihoods, our habitats and ultimately even the biodiversity to which it has so unilaterally committed itself.

We call on you to support this declaration and thus campaign for We call on you to support this declaration and thus campaign for self-determination of the regions over forest management.

Thank you for your support!