Every consignment of meranti, white lauan, bangkirai, and sapele entering Europe now needs an import notification at customs, after the European Commission added the genera behind some of the continent’s most traded tropical timbers to EU CITES Annex D from 29 June. That is according to the record of the European Timber Trade Federation’s General Assembly, held on 2 June at the Carrefour International du Bois fair in Nantes, where delegates were warned weeks before the listing that the watch list operates as a staging post for stricter controls.
Published under the EU Wildlife Trade Regulations, the listing covers logs, sawn timber, veneer, plywood, and transformed wood under customs heading 4409, which includes decking boards. Genera named in the federation’s bulletin include Anthoshorea, Pentacme, Richetia, Rubroshorea, and Shorea; the science behind the meranti, lauan, and bangkirai trade, plus the Entandrophragma group that supplies sapele, sipo, tiama, and kosipo.
Notification papers change hands at customs clearance rather than through the treaty’s permit system, with Annex D sitting below the formal appendices as a watch category that attaches no CITES papers to re-exports. Delegates heard that the category is best read as an early-warning tier, since the EU can add species without first consulting range states.
“International attention due to concerns on traceability and forest governance” keeps okoumé under scrutiny even with no CITES listing proposal on the table, Franck Monthe of the International Tropical Timber Technical Association told delegates, who also heard no Appendix II case is being prepared for azobé or the Entandrophragma mahoganies. Within four weeks of that assurance, Entandrophragma sat on Annex D.
Enforcement of listings already in force troubled the room more, with Belgian customs demanding the exact species on every cumaru shipment, a test the trade body Fedustria calls close to impossible and one that has effectively shut the decking hardwood out of that market. Letters have been sent by the ETTF to authorities in five member states and to the European Commission, warning that the approach risks converting a species-protection mechanism into a barrier to trade, with early responses positive and a Brazilian study underway to tell cumaru apart at the tree level.
Chemistry carries the nearest date, with Commission Regulation 2023/1464 halving the formaldehyde ceiling for furniture and wood-based articles to 0.062 milligrams per cubic metre of air from 6 August, half the E1 limit harmonised across the EU in 2004. Non-compliant stock cannot be placed on the market from that date, no matter when it was pressed, the assembly heard, with products made solely for exterior use, the single exemption.
Sanctions dominated the plywood section, with offers of birch plywood still circulating in the EU from Türkiye, Georgia, Kazakhstan, and China, and the suspicion inside the trade that the sheets contain Russian wood. Members resolved to restate the federation’s position to the European Commission, warning the traffic keeps Kremlin revenue flowing from log and veneer exports to third countries.
It comes as Brussels extended anti-dumping duties on Russian birch plywood to Kazakhstan and Türkiye in May 2024, then hit Chinese hardwood plywood with duties of 86.8 per cent from November 2025, as the assembly reviewed alongside the EU action on Brazilian softwood plywood. Investigations by London-based Earthsight have found that €1.5 billion of banned birch plywood has entered the bloc since the import ban began in July 2022.
Help with the EUDR is coming from within the federation, with the EUDR Assistant, built by German member association GD Holz, due to ETTF members in the third quarter, and filing a due diligence statement for every sale once the regulation’s obligations begin on 30 December. A user manual, training resources, and a first membership contract are in preparation, and the tool comes from the Berlin office that now runs the federation’s secretariat under Secretary General Nils Olaf Petersen, Wood Central understands.
Market reports from the member federations split the continent into two: Spain is growing at 2.4 per cent and completing 120,000 homes a year, while Denmark is carrying strong construction into 2026. Italian delegates reported slow demand, and Russian plywood remains openly available in breach of sanctions, while German trade is expected to hit bottom before any recovery takes hold.
Spanish importers sent another sanctions signal, reporting that okoumé plywood purchases rose as a birch substitute even as tropical imports overall fell 10 per cent. Dutch figures showed the clearest structural shift, with timber-based building accounting for 7 per cent of the 65,000 homes delivered in a country targeting 100,000. Wood Central understands that members will next meet in Dublin on 28 and 29 October for the International Softwood Conference, then in Antwerp on 5 and 6 November for its hardwood equivalent meeting.
