The Government of the Russian Federation has been instructed to ensure the submission to the State Duma of amendments to the Federal Law On Amendments to the Forest Code of the Russian Federation aimed at taking into account unprocessed wood and monitoring its trafficking, based on EU nations’ experience, stipulating, first and foremost, the necessity of assuring Russia’s national interests when exporting unprocessed timber.
The Government has also been instructed to ensure that amendments are made to Russian legislation concerning the specific procedures for using, conserving, protecting and rehabilitating forests, cadastral registration of forest plots, state registration of rights to forest plots and transactions with them, as well as measures aimed at countering exports of unprocessed wood that is procured in violation of Russian legislation. Instructions to the Government also address rules for putting out forest fires and forest seed production.
In particular, the government has been instructed jointly with executive regional authorities to take measures to conduct a government inventory account of the forests, improve federal state forest oversight, prevent and suppress crimes in logging and trafficking of unprocessed wood, and other violations of Russian legislation.
Deputy Prime Minister and Presidential Plenipotentiary to the Far Eastern Federal District Yury Trutnev and the Presidential plenipotentiaries to the Northwestern, Urals and Siberian federal districts have been instructed to develop a set of measures to decriminalise the timber industry and monitor their implementation.