THE European Commission has cast doubt on research commissioned by the Federal Government that questions the need to have laws to block illegally logged timber imports.
In a strongly worded submission, the EU also questions the research's estimates on the value of illegal timber imports into Australia and finds that timber in furniture is not included.
The submission was made in response to a draft regulatory impact statement, prepared for the Forestry Minister, Tony Burke, by the Centre for International Economics on potential legislation to restrict illegal timber entering the country.
The centre's report found that a strict Australian ban on illegal timber imports would be extremely costly for industry and was likely to achieve little to stop illegally logging globally. The report also warned against Australia acting unilaterally.
But the European submission asks why the researchers would assume that Australia would act alone, the US having passed legislation to make it a criminal offence to import illegal timber.
''The assumption that Australia act unilaterally is rather contentious,'' the submission says. ''Not only the EU and US but many other countries are developing measures to deal with illegally harvested timber.''
The European submission also found that the centre overestimated the cost of banning illegal timber and suggests the value of Australian imports could be as much as $840 million a year.
A 2005 study found that illegally logged timber represented about 10 per cent of all timber imported into Australia, worth about $400 million.
Illegally logged timber is harvested from protected areas, such as national parks and nature reserves in countries including Indonesia, Papua New Guinea and China.
The Government, in response to ''considerable uncertainty'' about the amount and value of illegal imports, has hired the consultancy Poyry Forest Industry to develop an assessment methodology.
A Greenpeace forestry campaigner, Reece Turner, said it was time for the Government to fulfil its 2007 election promise to ban illegal timber.
''The European Commission has exposed the Government's attempts to fudge the figures on illegal timber imports,'' he said.
