Dear Ladies and Gentleman, dear colleagues,

With great joy, let also me welcome you to the seminar on behalf of the Confederation of European Forest Owners (CEPF).

CEPF is one of the co-founder of the PEFC Council (Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification schemes), which means: is with on board of certification of managed forests and forest products from the very beginning.

We were motivated doing so as forest owners’ representatives across Europe believe that certification furthers their business and working according to national standards furthers the quality of forest management. Furthermore, certification seems to equip forest owners with a tool of proving their commitments to quality management and states this in a transparent way. Society’s representatives are requiring sustainable forest management being proved at site. Certification provides this proof and the compliance with international and national standards available to the latest. Can we do more?
The Ministerial Conferences for the Protection of Forests in Europe set the current valid standards at European level and in Slovakia the recent two years this got operationalised within the national context.

This work was a joint venture, where private forest owners were also involved. With the certification the partners enter into a long cooperation, which means that forest owners can and must cooperate with others and among their selves as well. We strongly believe that this furthers even better the quality of forest management and try therefore to support this activity, where we can. So we do this time in Slovakia, where together with the organisers we set as goal for today’s seminar that private and community forest owners will be informed on the specific requirements of the Slovakian PEFC scheme. Further, they will be provided with experiences from the Czech Republic and information on Austria’s PEFC scheme.
This, we hope, provides a good start into the certification of the Slovakian private and community forests.

At this point let me stress the fact that in this activity we got good support from our Slovakian partners, which is stated in the organisation of this seminar. I strongly believe that this is only a first event followed by others and this cooperation can grow stronger and stronger.

With this, ladies and gentleman I do wish for you a useful seminar providing answers to your questions on certification.

Thank you.

 A. Lengyel

Confederation of European Forest Owners
 
CEPF Contact Office Budapest  Benczur street 34  H-1068 Budapest    
Phone +36 1 461 20 19  Fax +36 1 351 70 29 

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