According to the latest modular report released by the EU's Forest Law Enforcement, Governance and Trade (FLEGT) Independent Market Monitor (IMM), the EU has strong demand for tropical timber from January to March 2022, mainly from Indonesia (commodity with a FLEGT license) and other countries that have signed a Voluntary Cooperation Agreement (VPA) with the EU.
Businesses are off to a good start in 2022, according to the latest IMM trade survey of the EU's major tropical timber consuming countries. Despite persistent logistical issues and high prices, all major EU markets monitored by IMM reported strong demand in the first quarter. In the first quarter of 2022, VPA partner countries’ exports to the EU increased by 36% compared to the same period in 2021, reaching US$854 million; exports increased by 20% year-on-year to 368,000 tons.
EU imports of FLEGT-licensed wood and wood products from Indonesia increased to $288 million in the first quarter; imports from the Netherlands increased to $79 million, up 15% year-on-year; imports from Germany exceeded $50 million, up 8 percent year-on-year %; imports from Belgium amounted to US$37 million, an increase of 15% year-on-year. Against the backdrop of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict and the global economic downturn, respondents to the IMM survey indicated that trade in tropical timber may slow down during the year; at the same time, some European companies also expressed concerns about the future.
As the IMM is a monitoring platform funded by the European Union and managed by the International Tropical Timber Organization (ITTO), the platform will cease operations in December 2022. To this end, IMM convened a stakeholder consultation meeting to assess stakeholder views on the implementation of the project, the quality of work and scope of operations, and the need to continue operating such independent market monitoring in the future.
Participants expressed the need to continue the role of the IMM to monitor trade in tropical and VPA partner countries and EU market perceptions of FLEGT and FLEGT licensing. In addition, stakeholders suggested that there could be discussions on how such monitoring could be further developed, arguing that with the growing global emphasis on timber legality and sustainability, and the importance of timber as a low carbon