Towards a European forest policy – Conflicting courses

Over the past several years, at least three different forest policy processes have emerged in the European sphere, two of which are legally binding agreements – one under the auspices of Forest Europe, attempting to negotiate a legally binding agreement; and two, the possibility of a legally binding agreement within the European Union (EU). We aim to identify, reconstruct and classify the major conflicts in both the Commission Green Paper on forest protection and information in the EU: preparing forests for climate change and Forest Europe initiated LBA process. The theoretical framework of this study uses an adapted conflict regulation approach based on the conflict triangle model. Empirically four dimensions are analysed to reconstruct and classify the conflicts: substance, procedure, relationship and discourses around the conflict. Empirical data has been gathered by qualitative document analysis and expert interviews with stakeholders at the national and EU level. The results of the empirical analysis identify three major conflicting interests: a) the subsidiarity principle, b) forest management and c) the responsibility for conducting the negotiations. Classifying these three conflicts into substance and procedural dimensions highlights the major role of the latter within the recent European forest policy processes.