UEF Participated in the meeting of the Expert Group of Forest and Forestry Stakeholder Platform

Thursday, April 30 , 2026 16

The UEF Vice-president Hans Jacobs participated in the EU Commission meeting of Expert Group of Forest and Forestry Stakeholder Platform, that was organized in hybrid format on April 27^th 2026.

Several topics were discussed intensively, among which the ongoing revision process of the Forest Strategy. The new guidelines to future-proof “Natura 2000” sites against Climate Change, released by the Commission a few weeks ago was also included in the agenda. EU is aware of the climate change and the need to develop the definition of the Natura 2000 targets.

There was discussion also about the bioenergy strategy, which shall be published at the end of this year. Challenges and opportunities for forests and the forestry were a key point of the debated.

Another topic was the Integrated framework of EU climate resilience, that DG Clima is preparing as an overall umbrella. DG ENVI and DG AGRI are forced to develop their own targets and management tools in order to make forests and nature more resilient in terms of climate change.

The same target was discussed under the topic of Communication of wild fire management. The area of wild fires is increasing from year to year, in 2025 all over the EU more than 1 Mio ha were destroyed. EU is developing management tools to strengthen the systems against the risks of wild fire and to find better ways to combat wild fires.

The UEF Presdency