Forest firms want to clean up their ecological act but fear EU sustainability drives could kill off competitiveness, the Forest-based Industries Forum heard last week.


Euro chiefs and Forest-based Industries (FBI) said sustainable public policies were parallel to corporate social responsibilities.


"Many firms rightly see this approach as the key to a better image and to maintaining the interest of financial investors," said Erkki Liikanen, EC commissioner for enterprise and information society.


He added: "This means an important change in looking at individual policy initiatives because their effects can no longer be considered in isolation."


Sustainable development was at the heart of European Union policies, he told the forum in Stockholm.


But it heard that the EUs white paper on Energy for the Future could hit competitiveness through import dependence, raw material cost changes and availability of wood.


"Laws need to be more coherent, allowing for a competitive market to secure the free-market principle," said an FBI spokesman.


Regulations and directives were crippling competitiveness, but expanding the EU could help competition by opening new markets.


FBI accounts for 3m jobs and 10% of European manufacturing industrys production value.


Story by Jez Abbott