Where Brussels’ Forest Restoration Ambitions Confront National Realities: A Country Comparative Historical Analysis

Despite far-reaching opposition during the legislative process, the EU Nature Restoration Regulation (EU-NRR) entered into force in August 2024. As a flagship initiative under the European Green Deal (EGD), it sets ambitious targets for restoring terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems, halt biodiversity loss and support climate objectives. Its adoption constitutes a remarkable development in EU forest policy as the regulation introduces legally-binding forest restoration targets and indicators despite long-standing fragmentation of EU competences in this area and deeply rooted national forest governance traditions. Consequently, the EU-NRR’s provisions for forest ecosystems unfold within highly contested political spaces and confront long-established institutional settings as they move from supranational formulation towards national implementation. Although the EU-NRR is directly applicable and does not require formal transposition, the successful implementation of its forest provisions is likely to depend not only on national actors and agencies but also on the degree of compatibility between the EU-NRR and long-established domestic forest institutional arrangements. Drawing on key concepts from historical institutionalism, we interpret forest governance developments as path-dependent processes that are occasionally disrupted by critical junctures, such as geopolitical conflicts or natural disasters, which redirect developments along country-specific trajectories. We employ comparative-historical analysis (CHA) to explain how these historical developments structure the compatibility between EU-NRR forest ecosystem provisions and domestic forest governance arrangements in two contrasting cases, Germany and Spain. While both countries exhibit decentralized governance structures and strong regional competencies in forest policy, they differ substantially in regulatory styles and the distribution of administrative responsibilities in forest policy at national level. Empirically, we combine i) an analysis of contemporary national forest-related policies, including legislative acts, strategy documents, and associated funding instruments, ii) 24 semi-structured interviews with officials from national ministries, environmental NGOs, and forest owner associations, and iii) an examination of historical restoration narratives developed by national experts and assessing the influence of social, (geo)political, economic, and ecological drivers on forest restoration practices and governance across three time periods (1st: <1940, 2nd: 1940-1989, 3rd: >1990). Our study demonstrates how country-specific historical developments shape the degree of institutional compatibility with EGD policies in the forest policy domain by linking historical institutional trajectories to the ongoing implementation of the EU-NRR.