Preparing the latest legislative initiatives concerning forests included in the European Green Deal (Green Deal) is underway. Before the parliamentary election break, the EU institutions are still working on their positions on the soil directive and the forest monitoring regulation.

The soil directive and the forest monitoring regulation are completely new EU legislation and, thus, a potentially significant addition to the legislation on forests in the EU region. Although the legislation will likely not be completed before the parliamentary elections, their preparation must be taken seriously in the spring term of 2024.

Several EU regulations related to land use require more monitoring and reporting from the member states. The Finnish forest industry emphasizes the cost-effectiveness of monitoring and the EU’s confidence in the member countries’ ability to produce high-quality information. The monitoring of soil conditions and adaptation must be included in the national forest inventory. This would guarantee both cost efficiency and a better evaluation of the cause-and-effect relationships of the different measurement results obtained from forests and forest soil.

In the commission’s proposal on Forest Monitoring law the data collection of about twenty indicators describing forests would be handled by remote monitoring and partly through national forest inventories. In creating comparable forest data, the correctness of the reported data is essential. Therefore, the member states must validate the collected data before publishing it.

For both initiatives, it is crucial to carefully assess the points where the legislation is proposed to be changed through lower-level regulations without the ordinary legislative procedure. Regarding the predictability of the forest industry’s operations, it is important that the legislation that is essentially related to its operations can only be changed with careful consideration.