RECOMMENDATION on the draft Council decision on the conclusion of a Voluntary Partnership Agreement between the European Union and the Republic of Cameroon on forest law enforcement, governance and trade in timber and derived products to the European Union (FLEGT)

DRAFT EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT LEGISLATIVE RESOLUTION

EXPLANATORY STATEMENT

OPINION OF THE COMMITTEE ON DEVELOPMENT (26.10.2010)

RESULT OF FINAL VOTE IN COMMITTEE

9.12.2010 - (12796/2010 – C7-0339/2010 – 2010/0217(NLE)) - ***

Committee on International Trade
Rapporteur: Yannick Jadot

Procedure : 2010/0217(NLE)

Document stages in plenary

Document selected :

A7-0371/2010

Texts tabled :

A7-0371/2010

Debates :

PV 17/01/2011 - 14
PV 17/01/2011 - 16
CRE 17/01/2011 - 14
CRE 17/01/2011 - 16

Votes :

PV 19/01/2011 - 6.3
Explanations of votes
Explanations of votes
Explanations of votes

Texts adopted :

P7_TA(2011)0009

DRAFT EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT LEGISLATIVE RESOLUTION
EXPLANATORY STATEMENT
OPINION OF THE COMMITTEE ON DEVELOPMENT
RESULT OF FINAL VOTE IN COMMITTEE

on the draft Council decision on the conclusion of a Voluntary Partnership Agreement between the European Union and the Republic of Cameroon on forest law enforcement, governance and trade in timber and derived products to the European Union (FLEGT)

(12796/2010 – C7-0339/2010 – 2010/0217(NLE))

(Consent)

The European Parliament,

– having regard to the draft Council decision (12796/2010),

– having regard to the draft Voluntary Partnership Agreement between the European Union and the Republic of Cameroon on forest law enforcement, governance and trade in timber and derived products to the European Union (FLEGT) (13187/2010),

– having regard to the request for consent submitted by the Council in accordance with the first subparagraph of Article 207(3) and the first subparagraph of Article 207(4), Article 218(6), second subparagraph, point (a), point (v) and Article 218(7) of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (C7-0339/2010),

– having regard to Rules 81 and 90(8) of its Rules of Procedure,

– having regard to the recommendation of the Committee on International Trade and the opinion of the Committee on Development (A7-0371/2010),

1. Consents to conclusion of the agreement;

2. Instructs its President to forward its position to the Council, the Commission, and the governments and parliaments of the Member States and of the Republic of Cameroon.

The objective of the Cameroon-European Union Voluntary Partnership Agreement (Cameroon-EU VPA) is to provide a legislative framework within which to (i) detect and ensure the traceability of timber, (ii) put in place government and independent verification procedures to certify that all timber exports from Cameroon to European markets have been procured, felled, transported and exported legally, in order to provide a basis for the legal management and exploitation of the Cameroonian forests, and (iii) reinforce the application of forestry regulations and governance.

The Cameroon-EU VPA was concluded on 6 May 2010 between the European Union and Cameroon following negotiations that lasted five years (counting the pre-negotiation period). It is part of the EU Action Plan on Forest Law Enforcement, Governance and Trade (FLEGT).

Most of the criteria derived from VPA definitions would appear to have been met, including those applying to the negotiation process, which culminated in an innovative and participatory agreement, the aim of which is to combat effectively the bad governance practices from which illegal trade in timber, and corruption, stem, and to establish an effective, transparent system for monitoring the legality of timber and derived products.

Cameroon, 40% of whose territory is covered in forest, is the largest African exporter of hardwoods to Europe. It sells 80% of sawn timber to the EU (particularly Italy and Spain) and in 2006 exported 481 million US dollars’ worth of timber and derived products, most of which came to the EU (USD 362 million). However, the industry is beset by serious problems of governance, leading to environmental degradation, inequalities, impoverishment and corruption. Despite the measures taken by the government, illegal activities continue, not least because very few effective sanctions are imposed[1].

There was therefore an urgent need to establish procedures to combat illegal trade in timber by analysing and overseeing more effectively the trading patterns, which are often complex.

The Cameroon-EU Voluntary Partnership Agreement, which was concluded in accordance with WTO rules, provides for a series of political and regulatory reforms which will enable Cameroon’s timber industry to establish good governance and greater transparency. The VPA establishes an innovative procedure for combating fraud and illegal practices in the timber trade, including a definition of what constitutes legal trade in timber, a system to check legality and independent audits of the whole system designed to achieve more sustainable trade in timber.

It is important to check that all timber and derived products exported from Cameroon to European markets are legal, that they have been produced without violating the rights of local and indigenous communities and that they have a real impact on fighting corruption and reinforcing the capacities of local civil society.

The agreement will come into effect as soon as the promised legislative changes have been implemented and the system to verify legality put in place. The first FLEGT licences, which will be issued only for timber exported to the EU, are expected by 2012.

By their compliance with the procedure during negotiations and the involvement of local civil society, Cameroon, the stakeholders and the European Union gave exemplary proof of their willingness to create a VPA.

The success of this VPA is also apparent from the fact that Cameroon has decided to extend the coverage of the agreement beyond exports to the EU, to include all timber used in, or leaving, the country.

Your rapporteur suggests adopting the same position as the Council on all aspects of the agreement, but does nevertheless express some additional reservations regarding the implementation of the VPA, and asks for the following recommendations to be borne in mind in the agreement’s implementation phase:

1. Your rapporteur wishes to stress the importance of clarity in the legal framework that forms the basis of the VPA. It is essential that the Commission focus its full attention on its structure and content.

2. Your rapporteur wishes to stress that very large-scale industrial exploitation of natural forests may lead to forest degradation and deforestation and contribute to the destruction of the global environment.

3. The rapporteur therefore stresses the need to guarantee the environmental integrity of the VPAs and, in particular, to ensure that the political and regulatory reforms undertaken in the context of the partnership agreement make an effective contribution to the EU’s and Cameroon’s international commitments on the environment and sustainable development, particularly the conservation and sustainable management of biodiversity resources, the effort to combat climate change, and the reduction of deforestation and forest degradation. He calls on the Commission against this background to pay the greatest attention to ensuring that the VPA does not encourage expansion of industrial exploitation of forests in the intact forest zones that are carbon-rich and other forests that play a valuable role in conserving biodiversity.

4. The rapporteur also stresses the need for the EU to take additional measures, complementary to this VPA, to combat large-scale deforestation and degradation of intact forests, and to promote their protection. He also emphasises that by encouraging the importing of timber products from these regions, the EU's action could run counter to its objectives in terms of combating climate change and protecting biodiversity.

5. Your rapporteur welcomes the commitments entered into on improving existing Cameroonian legislation. Reform of the Cameroonian legal framework in the forestry sector is necessary in order to have a VPA that is in keeping with the objectives of the FLEGT action plan and to ensure that implementation of the VPA complies with all international agreements and social and environmental criteria. Updating and drafting legal texts designed to improve social justice and respect for the rights of local and indigenous communities must be carried out with an eye to ensuring that the principles of participation and transparency continue to be observed. As indicated in the text of the agreement, these legislative improvements have to be completed before the FLEGT licences are issued.

6. The role of independent national civil society and of external observers will be essential in monitoring proper implementation of the agreement, so that governance in the industry is genuinely improved and corruption significantly declines. Independent surveillance in reinforcement of the law will have to be exercised by local civil society in the medium term. Surveillance and the development of additional measures to improve governance in the forestry sector must go beyond the level of the individuals who negotiated the VPA.

7. Your rapporteur asks the Commission to present within six months of the entry into force of a VPA, including the one between the EU and Cameroon, a report on the measures undertaken to ensure that the dialogue between the stakeholders and civil society, including the local and indigenous population, which was begun during the negotiations, continues and is maintained during the implementation phase. This report should include an assessment of the implications and real contributions of the content of the VPA in terms of the EU’s international commitments and those of the signatory country regarding the environment and sustainable development, including the conservation and sustainable management of biodiversity resources, the fight against climate change, and the reduction of deforestation and forest degradation.

8. According to some observers, this VPA was drawn up in a participative process unprecedented in Cameroon, which brought in non-State actors and representatives of NGOs (but with no direct participation by local communities and indigenous peoples). Nonetheless, effective, robust mechanisms must be put in place to guarantee ongoing participation by the country's civil society in the future, in order to reinforce the capacities of stakeholders and to ensure that local communities and the indigenous population are directly involved during the implementation phase. To achieve this, an improvement in the channels of communication and an information and awareness-raising campaign directed towards the Cameroonian public will be essential to ensure wider acceptance of the reforms that will be implemented upstream of the VPA.

9. The Commission must ensure that the rights of local and indigenous communities, who are often the first victims of climatic and environmental disruptions, are respected, and that these groups can take a direct part in drafting the new regulatory texts and in the implementation phase. The Cameroonian Government takes the view that it is up to the NGOs to make contact with these groups. During implementation of the agreement, the rapporteur asks that particular attention be paid to respect for the rights of these communities, particularly in the VPA’s legality matrices.

10. In order to ensure that corruption declines, it is important to encourage and support measures designed to guarantee the independence of the local judicial system, the creation of new judicial procedures, the right of referral to the courts for individual citizens or, at the least, for civil-society organisations, with regard to well-documented cases of corruption or illegality, as well as to respect for, and protection of, the rights of the plaintiffs. In addition, possible methods of enforcement and the application of judicial sanctions must be envisaged and monitored, in combination with independent audits. Local civil society must address these issues from this point of view.

11. Article 15 of the VPA stresses the need for additional technical and financial resources to support the establishment of a system to verify the legality of timber. However, in formal terms the agreement has no direct financial impact on the EU budget: any provision of additional resources by the Commission or the Member States will be subject to the normal aid programming procedures. In consequence, Cameroon, on the one hand, and the European Union, on the other, must identify and mobilise specific funding and the technical and human resources needed to implement the agreement. It is important that, in more general terms, the European Union should think about a strategy and substantial financial support for the implementation of this agreement, and other future FLEGT voluntary partnership agreements, commensurate with the ambitions and potential benefits of these agreements. This being the case, the rapporteur asks the Commission to estimate, in the context of the next budgetary exercise, the level of financial aid it considers necessary to guarantee implementation of the VPAs, individually and collectively, including the one signed with Cameroon.

12. Finally, the rapporteur asks that an ombudsman post, as well as an appeal and conciliation procedure, be set up for each VPA. This procedure must establish a right of appeal for civil society, which can be used if the timetable and detailed provisions of the agreement are not adhered to by one or the other party.

13. On the basis of an analysis of the new competences conferred on the European Parliament by the Lisbon Treaty with regard to trade agreements, your rapporteur emphasises the greater role that Parliament should play in this area, and calls on the Commission to report to Parliament on progress in negotiating and implementing the VPAs.

14. This being the case, the European Parliament, via its Committee on International Trade, asks to be kept informed and to be an addressee of documents sent to the Council, such as the minutes of the Joint Agreement Implementation Committee, and the record of the decisions and the Annual Report of that committee, the mission and audit reports of the agreement’s independent auditor, and the reports assessing the implementation of the agreement, including the studies of its social, economic and environmental impact.

15. In a spirit of transparency and cooperation, a full list of the names of the companies (and shareholders) to whom concessions are granted should be made public and available to all the stakeholders, and the European Union, in a spirit of reciprocal transparency, should publish the names of the European operators and importers.

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The favourable opinion issued by the rapporteur on the conclusion of the Voluntary Partnership Agreement with Cameroon is underpinned by the hope that all the issues referred to above will be addressed in a timely and satisfactory manner.

[1] Counter Brief Loggingoff: a civil society counter-brief on the Cameroon-EU VPA (March 2010).

for the Committee on International Trade

on the proposal for a Council decision on the conclusion of a Voluntary Partnership Agreement between the European Union and the Republic of Cameroon on forest law enforcement, governance and trade in timber and derived products to the European Union (FLEGT)
(12796/2010 – C7‑0339/2010 – 2010/0217(NLE))

Rapporteur: Eva Joly

SHORT JUSTIFICATION

The aim of the Voluntary Partnership Agreement (VPA) between the EU and Cameroon is to strengthen forest governance, promote Cameroonian timber products, and improve the country’s competitiveness in the international marketplace.

Notwithstanding the justifiable aspirations of the agreement, the Committee on Development would like to point out that it will be considered successful if the FLEGT's objectives and agreement commitments (strengthening community land tenure and access rights, ensuring the effective participation of civil society -with specific attention to indigenous peoples - in policy making on forest-governance related issues; increasing transparency and reducing corruption) are duly met.

In this regard, there are at least two issues that the DEVE Committee would like to highlight: on the one hand, it is important to ensure a meaningful forest governance reform process that takes into account the needs of forest-dependent communities and indigenous peoples and is based on the involvement of civil society in law-making and in participatory forest management with the aim of improving forest governance, enforcement mechanisms, and tackling corruption.

On the other hand, and linked to the aforementioned objectives, the agreements should define clear rules indicating the roles and responsibilities of all stakeholders during the law reform process, the process to make the wood tracking system operational, the setting up of the institutional framework and the process to sensitise and strengthen the capacity of actors.

Lastly, the Committee on Development would like to highlight the fact that although the FLEGT and Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD) schemes deal with forest uses, they are perceived as separate initiatives and handled by different ministers in the partner countries. Consequently, the Committee stresses that without insisting on good governance and recognition of rights of local communities and indigenous peoples, REDD schemes can bypass the consultation processes (and when relevant, the governance and law reforms) that are part of the FLEGT process. For that reason, REDD schemes must be built on the FLEGT consultation process and address the underlying causes of deforestation and forest degradation.

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The Committee on Development calls on the Committee on International Trade, as the committee responsible, to propose that Parliament give its consent.

RESULT OF FINAL VOTE IN COMMITTEE

Date adopted

Result of final vote

+:

–:

0:

Members present for the final vote

Thijs Berman, Michael Cashman, Véronique De Keyser, Nirj Deva, Charles Goerens, Catherine Grèze, Enrique Guerrero Salom, András Gyürk, Eva Joly, Filip Kaczmarek, Franziska Keller, Gay Mitchell, Norbert Neuser, Bill Newton Dunn, Birgit Schnieber-Jastram

Substitute(s) present for the final vote

Horst Schnellhardt, Bart Staes

Substitute(s) under Rule 187(2) present for the final vote

Eider Gardiazábal Rubial, Anna Ibrisagic, Miroslav Mikolášik

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