The EU Forest Law Enforcement and Governance Action Plan required the assessment of potential additional legislative options to tackle imports of illegal timber into the EU. Such measures would add to the existing EU regulations, which provide for the licensing of legally produced timber imports from countries which enter into voluntary partnership agreements with the EU. The Government has been encouraging the European Commission to publish its proposal on this subject and has supported background research into the effectiveness of possible options. On 20 December 2006, the Commission launched a public consultation on alternative options.
A number of approaches will be required to deal with illegal logging and the damage it causes. We will continue to be active in exploring options for excluding timber that has been illegally logged from UK markets.