Legality

Definition:

‘Legally harvested’ means harvested in accordance with the applicable legislation in the country of harvest;

 ‘Illegally harvested’ means harvested in contravention of the applicable legislation in the country of harvest;

‘Applicable legislation’ means the legislation in force in the country of harvest covering the following matters:

 —    rights to harvest timber within legally gazetted boundaries,

 —    payments for harvest rights and timber including duties related to timber harvesting,

 —    timber harvesting, including environmental and forest legislation including forest management and biodiversity conservation, where directly related to timber harvesting,

—    third parties’ legal rights concerning use and tenure that are affected by timber harvesting, and

—    trade and customs, in so far as the forest sector is concerned.

FLEGT licensed timber and CITES listed timber species (listed in Annex A, B or C) is considered in compliance with the EU Timber Regulation.

In order to recognise good practice in the forestry sector, certification or other third party verified schemes, that include verification of compliance with applicable legislation, may be used in the risk assessment procedure.

The legality as defined in the context of the EU Timber regulation is broadly consistent with the UK Government’s legality definition.

An overview of available legality verification systems, based on a recently published Proforest briefing note, explores to what extent voluntary legality verification systems deliver compliance with the EU Illegal Timber Regulation legality requirements.

Find the overview on the Legality Verification section here.

The Proforest Briefing Note ‘An overview of legality verification systems' (February 2011) is available for download here.