Eurostat, the Statistical Office of the European Union is responsible for the collection, management and publication of data concerning forest products and trade statistics as well as of other statistics regarding the forest sector as a whole. The collection of Eurostat statistics in this field is carried out in cooperation with the Intersecretariat Working Group (IWG) on Forest Sector Statistics, bringing together FAO, UNECE, ITTO (International Tropical Timber Organisation) and Eurostat in collecting forest statistics. The primary tool for the co-operation is the annual Joint Forest Sector Questionnaire (JQ) used by all organisations. The idea behind the JQ is that one common questionnaire is used for collecting forest product data world-wide using a set of harmonised product aggregations, coding and definitions. Each agency takes care of the collection of the data of a certain number of countries, and Eurostat is responsible for EU and EFTA Member States. After validation the organisations share the collected data and use it in their publications, thus avoiding duplication of work and inconsistencies between international sources.
In the efforts towards improving the co-ordination, communication and cooperation between the Commission and the Member States and between the Member States themselves, the European Forestry Information and Communication System (EFICS) preparatory action for development of European Forest Information and Communication Platform (EFICP) was sub-delegated by the Commission's Directorate-general for Agriculture and Rural Development to  its Joint Research Centre (JRC) in 2004. The EFICP preparatory action was completed in 2007 and is being incorporated into the European Forest Data Centre.