Romania’s timber exports will not be limited anymore, as it was conveyed politically in the spring of 2015.

The MPs are now drafting a law that will continue to allow timber exports. Their argument is that a ban would generate “negative economic consequences in chain," because the domestic furniture and construction industry can only absorb half of the exploited timber, reports local Profit.ro.

The public debate on limiting the timber exports intensified at the beginning of last year. The media reported that representatives of Austrian group Schweighofer-Holzindustrie, the largest processor of timber in Romania, met president Klaus Iohannis in order to ask for the removal from the Forest Code of a provision that limited the timber exploitation of each species to 30% for each company. Iohannis said at that time that the provision should be removed, because it was noncompetitive.

Most of the Social-Democratic (PSD) MPs rejected the President’s request and the Victor Ponta Government promised to draft an emergency ordinance that would ban timber exports until the end of 2015. However, the Ponta cabinet finally dropped the idea of the emergency ordinance, and sent to the Parliament a draft law that didn’t ban the timber exports, but introduced a stricter export regime.

The project was approved by the Senate but has waited in the Chamber of Deputies for more than a year. Now it is ready for the final vote.

editor@romania-insider.com