Finland will lead the way in coordinating a ten-year European forest research partnership worth about €240 million, an effort uniting 28 countries and 99 organisations behind a single Horizon Europe programme for the continent’s forest sector. That is according to the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry, which on 1 June launched the partnership and confirmed its coordination team would sit in Helsinki.
The launch follows three decades of European forest research networks — among them WoodWisdom-Net, SUMFOREST and ForestValue, the last of which is still running as ForestValue2 until the end of 2027. By binding national funders into one decade-long structure, the partnership aims to curb the fragmentation that has weakened Europe’s standing in the international forest research agenda.
The programme rests on a Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda published in October 2025 by the EUFORE project, coordinated by the European Forest Institute, and drawn from more than 2,200 stakeholder responses across Europe. That agenda, a precondition for any Horizon Europe partnership, will shape the priorities of the first joint research funding call.
Minister of Agriculture and Forestry Sari Essayah said the coordinating role gave Finland a rare opening to advance sustainable forest use and long-term European cooperation, after years of Finnish effort to build it. “Now this work bears fruit in a very concrete way,” Essayah said.
Based in Helsinki, the coordination team will steer day-to-day implementation and handle communication as the partnership moves into its operational phase over the summer. Registered under Horizon Europe, the effort addresses an EU Forest Strategy goal to align scattered national research and reduce duplication. Project Coordinator Mika Kallio, who has stressed the importance of the preparatory stage, has cast the decade-long programme as a chance to deepen sustainable management across the sector. “It is a unique opportunity to develop sustainable forest management,” Kallio said.
Horizon Europe rules encourage the partnership to bring in strategic research partners from outside the EU, leaving room for forest-science bodies beyond Europe to join later calls. The first of those calls is expected to open in autumn 2026, with selected projects starting towards the end of 2027.
