The emergence of the European Union Timber Regulation: How Baptists, Bootleggers, devil shifting and moral legitimacy drive change in the environmental governance of global timber trade

Narrating illegal logging across the globe: between green protectionism and sustainable resource use

“…In the EU, the prominence of illegal logging and related trade as a topic culminated in the policy making process that resulted in the adoption of EU Timber Regulation (EUTR, adopted in 2010) (Sotirov 2014, Sotirov et al 2017, and the debate continued throughout the implementation stage (Schwer and Sotirov 2014;Sotirov et al 2015, Leipold 2017. The EUTR contains a formal prohibition on placing illegal timber on the EU market and obliges every economic operator who place timber products on the EU market for the first time to exercise due diligence.…”

“…The policy discourses surrounding the formulation of the EUTR were marked by heated debates, in particular focussing on a clause prohibiting the placing of illegal timber on the EU market, the relation between legality and sustainability (Sotirov et al 2017), and the allocation of responsibilities (between 'producer' and 'consumer' countries) concerning illegal logging . The topic of illegal logging rose on the European policy agenda in 2002 when the UK Government and British forest administrations, forest industry and ENGOs jointly defined it as a priority issue and set the objective to prepare EU legislation in the matter.…”

“…This ultimately led to the adoption of the FLEGT Action Plan in 2003, which applies the logic of 'consumer' countries helping 'producer' countries through voluntary agreements. The European Commission announced later on that further legislative action was needed to complement and strengthen the FLEGT policies (Sotirov et al 2017).…”

“…In terms of the intergovernmental negotiations, the EUTR was supported by member states who significantly depend on timber imports and where the timber import based industry plays an important role (e.g. the UK, the Netherlands and Denmark) as well as by the European Parliament (Sotirov et al 2017).…”

“…In the literature up to now, narratives on illegal logging and the emerging global legality verification regime have only been analysed in 'consumer' countries, i.e. the US, the EU and Australia , Sotirov et al 2017. This research shows that the development of the regime -specifically the development of the three laws that mainly constitute the regime -required a significant shift in the narratives on illegal logging that re-interpreted environment and development discourses, resulting in a shift of global responsibilities connected to illegal logging.…”