About 25 percent of the wood products imported into European countries had some form of third-party certification or legal verification in 2014, an increase from 19 percent in 2007, according to Fordaq.
The number increases to 33 percent if the timber from 17 countries that currently have licensing systems already had licensing in 2014, according to Fordaq.
“Obviously that leaves a large proportion of imports which are unlikely to be from third party certified or legally verified sources,” the report said.
Much of the unverified wood is coming from China, from which the EU imported €8 billion ($9.03 billion) worth of wood products in 2014. Close to all of it was unverified wood, according to Global Wood Markets Info.
Europe also imported roughly €4 billion ($4.51 billion) worth of unverified wood products from the United States in 2014, GWMI reported.
