Among the Nordic countries Sweden has the biggest forest area; circa half of all the forest reserves of that region. Sweden is the country felling the largest share of its forest growth. However, in the EU Germany is the country that possesses the most forests counted in volume units. Germany has the biggest population of all EU countries, but at the same time one third of the country's total area - 10.7 million hectares - is covered by forest. The forest covered area contains circa 3.5 billion cubic metres of timber. In Sweden the current forest area is 22.3 million hectares of productive forest and our current timber reserves amount to circa 3.3 billion cubic metres.

Thus, Germany's timber reserves are somewhat bigger than Sweden's, but the area is less than half of that in Sweden.

An obvious explanation is that in Germany forests grow on sites of considerably better quality, and furthermore German forestry is more specialized in timber production.

Like Sweden, also Germany makes considerable investments in reducing its carbon dioxide emissions, for example by increasing growth and forest area. As a result of numerous reforestation projects since 1992 that area has grown by an annual average of 17,600 hectares.