Thousands of Romanians have got together on social media and prepare massive protests in Bucharest and other big Romanian cities, as well as abroad, against the illegal forest cutting in the country. The first such meetings should take place on Saturday, May 9, with more than 10,000 people expected, according data on Facebook.

The protesters are organized in Facebook groups that have been involved in past years in setting up massive protests against Canadian group Gabriel Resources’ cyanide gold exploitation in Rosia Montana and American group’s Chevron’s shale gas operations in Vaslui, Eastern Romania. Both projects have been halted.

The main target of their protests is now Austrian group Schweighofer Holzindustrie which has been lobbying strongly in the past year against Romania’s new Forestry Code. The new law limits the wood volume that one single company can process in Romania.

The Austrian company is the biggest timber producer in Romania and has a dominant position in the local market. Most of the timber it produces goes to export. Local furniture producers are unhappy with this situation. They say Schweighofer Holzindustrie has increased the price of timber significantly, which makes it hard for small furniture producers to survive.

The new Forestry Code the Parliament approved in February this year would shake Schweighofer Holzindustrie’s quasi-monopoly position, as it limits the quantity of raw wood that a company can process to 30% of the total volume cut.

Later in March, Romania’s President Klaus Iohannis sent the law back to the Parliament for re-examination.

Romanian Prime Minister Victor Ponta had received a letter from the Austrian group’s owner and CEO Gerald Schweighofer at the end of September 2014 asking him for a meeting to talk about this law. Schweighofer was pointing out to Ponta that the new Forest Code would harm the bilateral trade treaty between Austria and Romania and would force his group to lay off some of its 2,600 employees in Romania. The letter was recently leaked to the Romanian media.

The Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA), an international environmental organization, recently released a video exposing the leadership of Holzindustrie Schweighofer willingly and knowingly accepting illegally harvested timber and incentivizing additional illegal cutting through a bonus system.

Gerald Schweighofer issued a public statement denying the accusations on his group that appeared in media reports. He said that any wood delivery to Holzindustrie Schweighofer has to be sourced from legal harvesting only.

The Austrian group had a turnover of EUR 510 million in Romania in 2013. It estimated EUR 700 million in revenues in 2015.

editor@romania-insider.com