Response to interpellation 2024/25:175 on the species protection investigation and the EU Birds Directive
Translated from Swedish by AI; the translation may contain errors. The Swedish text is the original.
Summary AI, written in advance
1 L argues that the government is working to strengthen ownership and usage rights through an inquiry that analyzes compensation for restrictions in land use due to species protection. L emphasizes that the inquiry covers both national protection and birds via the EU's Birds Directive. 2 L argues that the government is working to improve forest policy and strengthen the bioeconomy through inquiries. 2 L argues that Sweden is engaging in the European Court of Justice to protect Swedish interests and that there is a lack of provisions on strict protection for birds' habitats. 2 3 L denies that the inquiry is being hidden and wants to change unsuitable applications. 3 L emphasizes that the Birds Directive must not be interpreted as meaning that individual birds should be assessed. 4 C argues that forest owners are met with a legal circus where they are denied logging without compensation. 4 C considers current legislation to be unreasonably oppressive and demands increased clarity. 5 6 C argues that the government has not included birds in the review of the national protection.
Written by AI in advance and may contain errors. The numbers lead to the speech a statement builds on; check against the text below.
Statsrådet Romina Pourmokhtari (L)
Mr. Speaker! Helena Lindahl has asked me if I intend to act so that reliefs regarding the implementation of the EU Birds Directive shall be included in the species protection investigation and if I intend to act so that forest owners shall be guaranteed state compensation if a bird species prevents logging.
The then government made an amendment to the Species Protection Ordinance in June 2022 based on proposals from the previous species protection investigation (SOU 2021:51). The amendment entered into force in October 2022 and aimed to ensure that the provision in the Species Protection Ordinance, which implements the prohibition provisions in the EU Birds Directive, shall be in line with the corresponding provision in the directive.
There are also other related issues that the government has assessed need to be reviewed. For example, the ongoing investigation *A robust forest policy that sees the forest as a resource* (dir. 2024:16) has, among other things, a mandate to review the so-called knowledge requirement, which means that it is necessary to inventory forest land with regard to, among other things, the presence of species to be protected according to the Birds Directive. The investigation has a mandate to analyze and, if necessary, propose measures so that the knowledge requirement and the rule of burden of proof in the Environmental Code do not lead to disproportionate costs for the landowner. The purpose is to protect the right of use and ongoing land use. The assignment shall be reported by August 31, 2025, at the latest.
When it comes to the question of whether I intend to act so that forest owners are guaranteed state compensation in cases where a bird species prevents logging, it is precisely what I have done by appointing the investigation that is currently ongoing at the Ministry of Climate and Enterprise.
The background to the investigation is, among other things, that the government considers that landowners should receive financial compensation for restrictions on ownership and the right of use to the extent that they have a right to it, and that the protection of ownership rights shall be guiding in the matter of compensation for restrictions on ongoing land use as a result of the species protection. The conditions for compensation shall be clear and predictable in the same way as in similar decisions regarding, for example, the establishment of area protection. The assignment shall be reported internally within the Government Offices by December 31, 2024, at the latest.
Helena Lindahl (C)
Mr. Speaker! Many thanks, Minister, for the answer!
For several years, forest owners have been faced with what I would like to call a legal circus regarding species protection. Very many people have received notices from the relevant authorities that they are not allowed to fell their forest due to common species, including birds - furthermore, in many cases without compensation.
The Species Protection Ordinance is being investigated at the Minister's department, and changes to the species protection are to be proposed. The issue of compensation shall also be reviewed. It is more than welcome.
Mr. Speaker! In the Minister's response, it is clarified that the regulations shall be reviewed, as well as the issue of compensation for those forest owners who are not allowed to harvest their forest because species are to be protected. But what makes me a little puzzled concerns the relaxations in the regulations regarding the birds. The Minister said that this has already been done via a supplement to the latest species protection investigation, that is, the one carried out by the previous government in 2022. But that supplement obviously does not work because forest owners still are not allowed to harvest their forest because of common birds. At present, they also usually do not receive any compensation.
If the rules regarding the birds are not reviewed in the ongoing investigation, it will be difficult to achieve a legally secure forestry. I would regret that in that case.
Mr. Speaker! I had hoped that both the Minister and the Government had realized that increased clarity and significant tightening linked to ownership and usage rights interventions from the state's side were needed - even when it concerns the birds, I want to emphasize. The legal interpretations slide and slide and become increasingly unreasonably oppressive towards individual citizens; I must nevertheless use those words, because if anything, it should arouse discomfort and perhaps also some anger among all freedom-oriented people.
I want to ask the Minister, in light of how legally uncertain the current legislation regarding, for example, the Birds Directive is, whether it is not reasonable that the species protection investigation also submits proposals for amendments regarding the rules concerning just birds.
Elisabeth Thand Ringqvist (C)
Mr. Speaker! The Centre Party's forest policy, like all our policies, is based on freedom under responsibility with simple and clear rules - all to achieve a sustainable forestry that manages to balance environmental, climate, and production interests. We start from a strong ownership and usage right.
Since the current forest legislation was introduced in the early 90s, much has improved. The vast majority of the country's 300,000 forest owners take great responsibility to ensure that the forest remains and is managed in a good way. But just as Helena Lindahl describes, in recent years we have seen large, growing problems with forest owners not being allowed to harvest their forest.
Norra Skog told me a few weeks ago that half of all the forest reported for logging in Jämtland and Härjedalen cannot be logged. In many cases, it is because there might be a bird in the forest.
Minister Pourmokhtari stood here about a year ago and spoke about what could be done in the issue of species protection. I then described my visit to the Hyttsten family in Konäs in Västjämtland. They have managed their forest in the best possible way and now want to log in order to carry out a generational shift where the youngest daughter takes over the dairy farm. But observations of marks from the ring-hack of a three-toed woodpecker put a stop to this. It is not known when the woodpecker was there or even if it really is marks from a woodpecker in their forest. After a year of processing, the family has now been granted a permit for review in the Land and Environment Court. This small step forward in the mills of bureaucracy has been celebrated.
A year ago, the Minister confirmed that the government shares the view that there are problems with the design of the law and the application of these species protection rules. But my examples from Jämtland and Härjedalen show that the problems persist. Forest owners who have managed their forests well are apparently expected to accept that the value of their assets is being devalued.
The Center Party sees the problems. Many members of the Center Party live with them. We want to address them with four tools: to change the species protection in the way that Helena Lindahl has just described, to extend the waiting agreement to solve the forest owners' economic problems in the short term, to prevent the over-implementation of the EU's upcoming nature restoration law, and to review the definition of who actually is the affected public when it comes to the forest.
I go back to the answer from the Minister. It is very clear that the birds are not included in the review being conducted. Therefore, I want to ask two questions. Why are the birds not included in the review, and when does the government intend to address the birds' impact on Swedish forestry and the Swedish forest industry?
Statsrådet Romina Pourmokhtari (L)
Mr. Speaker! It is possible that we Liberals are prone to skimming and still have some folkpartism within us, but if the question now evokes such enormous engagement within the Center Party and they truly burn for a strong ownership and usufruct right, I would wish that they had at least read the directives for the ongoing investigation. But since the members do not seem to be familiar with what the government is working on in this area, I must clearly explain it.
When I came with our government to the Government Offices, I saw - just as I mentioned in my response - that the previous government had made changes but also that they are absolutely not sufficient. The Center Party and the Liberals did not succeed in achieving a sufficient improvement during the previous government cooperation.
Mr. Speaker! Now we have a liberal, bourgeois government, and then it is very simple to work out policies that will strengthen ownership and usufruct rights. For us, it is a fundamental principle.
The ongoing letter investigation, which the government has commissioned, consists of two main tasks. The first is to produce proposals for amended regulations on national protection. It is entirely correct that national protection does not cover birds. Why? Yes, because all wild birds in Sweden are protected by the EU's Birds Directive.
The second main objective of my investigation is to produce proposals on provisions regarding the right to compensation for restrictions in land use as a result of protection. This main objective therefore covers the issue, because the right to compensation covers all protection – both protection of species that are protected under EU legislation and species that are protected under national protection. Now I have accounted for what the government is looking at through this investigation.
The ongoing letter investigation is therefore looking at both issues concerning changes to the national protection and aspects concerning birds by simply not including them in the part of the assignment concerning national protection. That is entirely correct. But they are included in the part concerning compensation issues.
Mr. Speaker! The Government shares the view of the problems that the members are raising. There are problems with today's design and with the application of the species protection rules. That is why this investigation is underway. It is a so-called letter-of-the-law investigation that is to complement the material that already exists in the form of the previous species protection investigation's report.
I also want to mention that many different processes are ongoing in parallel. One process that becomes relevant, not least, for all of us who are involved in this issue is how the EU's Birds Directive is to be interpreted. This belongs to the most fundamental problems in the situation that arises for many forest owners in Sweden. There are two ongoing cases in the European Court of Justice concerning exactly this. I want to highlight to the members that Sweden is very actively involved in these cases to safeguard our Swedish interests. We are following how these court cases turn out, because I believe it will affect how the Birds Directive is applied in the entire EU and also in Sweden.
Helena Lindahl (C)
Mr. Speaker! It is probably not only the Center Party that wonders what the secret internal investigation consists of. I have received a huge number of questions from forest owners, the forest industry, and LRF, and none of them seem to know either. Perhaps it is only the Liberals who have understood most of it in theory while the rest of us absolutely have not understood. Or perhaps a little more pedagogy is needed from the minister's department and that one ducks a little less from the media's questions, because even there it has been unclear. That is what I was told.
Mr. Speaker! The state allows one to shoot capercaillie. If, on the other hand, one wants to cultivate highly restricted parts of one's own forest and previously of one's own free will taken consideration for the bird, the state can ruin one financially. Is that reasonable?
This affected Kristofer Stigen in Bollebygd, whom I and my colleague Stina Larsson visited some time ago. He owns 145 hectares of well-managed forest, and on his land, he has black grouse which he has tried to take into account by practicing a more low-intensity forestry with, among other things, selective logging. Some years ago, he applied to harvest approximately 20 hectares, just under 14 percent of his total holdings. But he ran into trouble with the Swedish Forest Agency, which decided on quite extensive restrictions on how this area could be harvested. Kristofer Stigen chose to adapt to the agency's decision and lost in a single blow 1.5 million kronor in revenue from the forestry. It also turned out that the forest in the same stroke lost an additional millions in value because the presence of black grouse and the Swedish Forest Agency's decision have reduced his disposal over the property.
Mr. Speaker! Since we in Sweden are to have ownership and use rights to our property, at least on paper, there are also expectations of compensation from the state via its authorities when restrictions are made on people's property. Therefore, Kristofer Stigen sued the state and wanted compensation for the infringement of his ownership and use rights. The answer was, in practice: You can forget about it.
Since he voluntarily took the capercailians into account, the Land and Environment Court in Vänersborg awarded Kristofer exactly zero kronor in compensation and instead charged him the state's costs for legal counsel, which became an additional quarter of a million to add on top of previous losses.
Mr. Speaker! I honestly think that this is completely deplorable, appalling, and scandalous. It is also crystal clear that it was never the legislator's intention that we should have it in this way. Furthermore, it is somewhat fascinating that courts are finding increasingly creative ways to avoid taking any consideration whatsoever of what is, at least on paper, a constitutionally protected right and is regarded as a human right.
Without property rights, no liberalism - that is a cornerstone of liberal thinking. As a liberal and responsible minister, does the minister not see that the state has crossed the line of decency here?
Elisabeth Thand Ringqvist (C)
Mr. Speaker! I can read, the Minister, and I can also draw conclusions from what I read. I can also draw conclusions from what is not written.
I know that birds are not included in the national protection, but I also hear that the only way the government intends to handle the birds is by paying for the areas where there are birds. It is clear that one can then say that the government has addressed the issue of birds. This means, however, that enormous areas of land in Sweden will become nature reserves. It also means that the investigation did not do what the environment minister and I talked about a year ago, that is, looked at how Finland did when they implemented a model within current EU legislation that allowed birds and their habitats to be exempted in the way forestry is conducted in Finland. This existed as an opportunity to include in the investigation, but it was chosen not to be done.
If I interpret the minister correctly, the answer is: We are waiting for the EU. It is the legal processes in the EU that determine how we will implement the birds directive in Swedish legislation. Approximately when does the minister see this implementation and the new way of interpreting the EU's birds and habitats directives can become a reality?
Statsrådet Romina Pourmokhtari (L)
Mr. Speaker! I will begin by answering Member Helena Lindahl regarding what the state is doing when it applies these legislations and whether the state has not significantly exceeded the limit it should adhere to. The state apparatus is regulated through the laws and decisions that the Riksdag and the government make, and it is we who need to ensure that the laws are applied in the way they are intended to be applied. This can be done through clarifications of how the laws should be applied, but also by being more proactive in changing them, which this government wants to do based on several of the investigations currently underway. One of them is the literal investigation concerning what we are talking about here today, but there are also other works ongoing in the government to promote forest production in Sweden and strengthen Sweden's bioeconomy.
No forest policy reform has been made since the early 90s, so there is a need to improve Swedish forest policy. I expect the Centerpartiet to engage heavily in this work.
Regarding the ongoing cases in the Court of Justice of the European Union, it is not correct to claim that the government is leaning back and waiting to see what the Court of Justice of the European Union does. What I did was to point out that there are two ongoing cases in the Court of Justice of the European Union that concern precisely this, and Sweden chooses to engage actively in these cases in order to contribute in different ways to safeguarding Swedish interests. It is noticeable, not least in today's debate, how much Sweden is affected by the decisions made within the EU's institutions, and therefore it is important to have an engagement there as well.
When it comes to Finland, many mean that Finland has a significantly more permissive interpretation of the regulations.
As I have explained, the government is currently preparing issues regarding species protection, and we have a very extensive basis in the Species Protection Investigation's report. This includes, of course, various referral responses and thoughts, not least regarding the implementation of the EU's species protection. There is therefore an active work ongoing, and all EU member states are obliged to protect species at the same level, in accordance with the requirements in both the Birds Directive and the Habitats Directive. There is also a requirement to introduce national regulations.
It is obviously relevant to discuss the differences in how countries do things. If Finland does not require strict protection for birds' habitats, why does Sweden, is a question that is sometimes asked. The truth is that there is no such provision in the Swedish regulatory framework. There are therefore a number of inaccuracies circulating, for example when comparing Sweden with Finland. There is no provision in the Swedish regulatory framework regarding strict protection for birds' habitats. The provisions that exist in the Species Protection Ordinance obviously govern the Bird Directive's protection provisions, and that is in line with the directive's provisions – so that is simply where the difference arises.
I can assure the members that this is an issue we will certainly have the opportunity to discuss further, not least when the government can present the proposals we intend to submit once the investigation has looked into this. That it would be an internal, hidden letter investigation is a false statement. Conducting an investigation internally can lead to it going quite a bit faster, which we are keen on. If one is interested in what applies regarding these directives, one can simply read about it on regeringen.se, so it is not particularly hidden.
Helena Lindahl (C)
Mr. Speaker! Well, Romina Pourmokhtari, one can still say that it is somewhat hidden when even journalists contact us to ask if we have heard anything about your investigation, since the journalists do not have the opportunity to ask questions. In the name of honesty, the minister himself has also ducked questions regarding just birds, so one must probably be able to say that it has been a bit secret.
When species protection results in people's lives being ruined, one must simply say stop. I will be very clear. The government is considering the possibility of banning rights databases to protect personal privacy for, among other things, criminals. The same state, however, provides information on the submission of logging notifications from completely ordinary private individuals who simply want to use their property.
This is happening with full awareness that these data are used by ideologically driven activists who sabotage individuals' ownership and economy under the pretext that it is about protecting the environment. Furthermore, the species protection provides a toolbox that gives the same politically driven activists immense opportunities to act almost like an authority and have more influence over the land than the one who actually owns it.
Mr. Speaker! Between 2015 and 2023, the number of reported knapweed increased from 19,000 to over 350,000. It cannot be the intention that the state should hand out maps and compasses to a few individuals so that they can, in principle, roam around on others' land and search for protected but common species that are legally effective. The state has, through negligence, replaced the property owner's freedom under responsibility with some form of informal exercise of authority concentrated on a few private individuals. In this way, one is assisting in deliberate and systematic attacks against individuals' right to property.
Will the minister, as a Liberal, put their foot down and stop this?
Statsrådet Romina Pourmokhtari (L)
Mr. Speaker! I must once again point out that I do not agree with the image that we are hiding in matters concerning species protection. I have given several interviews on the species protection issue, not least when the investigation was commissioned but also in connection with the commissioning of the large bioeconomy and forestry investigation which is also ongoing. I have therefore given a number of interviews, but I can perhaps request some sympathy for the fact that I, as minister, am responsible for very many different issues and do not speak about these issues every day. Peter Kullgren and I are trying to handle these issues collectively in the best possible way. It is however absolutely not the case that no interviews have been given regarding this investigation and that I have not accounted for which parts the investigation intends to look at. Furthermore, there have been interviews in the niche newspapers, which are of course particularly interested in this.
The government simply has a view that there are applications currently ongoing that are not suitable, and we want to change the conditions for these. Regarding, for example, the ongoing case in the European Court of Justice, the government and Sweden are currently pointing out that it is important that the Birds Directive is not interpreted as meaning that individual birds should be assessed, i.e., a measure's impact on individual birds. In that case, we would end up in a situation that is completely unreasonable and where we simply cannot utilize our forest in the way that Sweden needs. Such an interpretation risks making it completely unreasonable in relation to Swedish forestry.
This is an example of something that the government is pushing for. The Swedish authorities, Naturvårdsverket and Skogsstyrelsen, have made the assessment that the Court of Justice of the EU supports an interpretation which implies that a certain level of impact on the species' population is required for a protection in the Birds Directive to apply.
So it is moving a bit, I want to inspire hope at this point at the end of this interpellation debate. I look forward to discussing the issue further, not least with the two members that I have discussed it with today.
Source: The Swedish Parliament. The speeches come from the open data of the Riksdag, translated into English by AI, which may contain errors.