Major VICTORIES, in the Senate, for Romania’s forests! Today there was a vote. What we have won and what we are still fighting for

After almost a month of debates in the Senate, after almost a year and a half since the actual work and public consultations for the draft of the new Forestry Code began and after almost ten years of civic mobilizations, including protests, for forests, today, the Romanian Senate adopted an important series of changes to the most important law in the field. The law was voted with 87 votes “for”, one vote “against” and 3 abstentions.

No, we still haven’t got everything we wanted, and what’s more, the debates and the vote in the Chamber of Deputies are coming. But that doesn’t mean we don’t have the right to rejoice for these stage victories, led by the free access to the forest, for recreational purposes, on foot or by bicycle, of any citizen.

I thank all those who in the last year got involved in the debates related to the draft law of the new Forestry Code, either by participating directly in the consultations, or by signing petitions or even protests.

Thanks to exceptional civic pressure, we achieved some major victories that some of us have been fighting for for over 10 years, such as:
– free access to the forest, on foot or by bicycle, for recreational purposes;
– access without prohibitions, for professional purposes, of journalists and environmental activists documenting illegal logging;
– stopping the cutting of forests around Bucharest (civic platform Together for the Green Belt) and protection of outstanding trees;
– the criminalization of computer fraud in SUMAL 2.0, specifically, in the Forestry Code;
– maintaining the measure of confiscation of timber thieves’ trucks (removed from the Government’s form), in a form that deserves, however, improvements.

However, we remain alert, because the debates in the Chamber of Deputies are coming up, which is decisive, where we must defend what we have won so far and improve the Forestry Code in at least two more major points – an article that leaves no room for any interpretation regarding the confiscation of the trucks of wood thieves and the criminal sanctioning of those who illegally cut and destroy parks in cities, such as the case of the IOR, which despite

of their name, they are still forests and we need to protect them at least to the same extent as those in the mountains.
Thank you all! Move on! Together, we will take this fight to the end, even if it will last as long as the one for Roșia Montană. Because it is a fight worth fighting, for the forests, for us, for our children and grandchildren.

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