Pulping unfair incentives: Separating EU policies from paper industry interests
20 April 2026
This briefing documents the subsidies flowing to the pulp and paper sector, outlines their social and ecological impacts in Finland, Portugal, Spain and Sweden, and offers a credible alternative vision for where that funding should go.
It finds that although the pulp and paper industry is dominated by a few giant conglomerates, it has an outsized and destructive effect on forests in Europe and abroad and still receives huge taxpayer backed subsidies. The impacts are felt on our purses, our climate, and our rural economies, but also within other forestry sectors, as the benefits enjoyed by this large industry squeezes smaller actors looking to make a living from better and more resilient forestry practices.
It is not surprising that pulp and paper lobbyists are calling to weaken laws that support better forestry. However, subsidies are not intended to prop up industrial-scale extraction by a few dominant industry players, they are there to ensure smaller, environmentally sustainable businesses are able to get off the ground, scale up and create opportunities to deliver local, thriving rural economies. Nowhere is this clearer than in the forestry sector, where the initial cost of changing from clear-cutting to continuous cover forestry can be intimidating, but the benefits (economic, social, ecological) are myriad.
