Suppliers’ documentation

Under the latest European Union Directive on Forest Reproductive Material the Directive, which came into effect on 1st January 2003, had been expected to iron out the anomalies which had occurred under the original 1966 and 1971 Directives. Instead, after several season’s of trading, nurseries have been experiencing difficulties in obtaining or understanding the information on genetic quality and origin required under the Directive.

The reason for this is that, under subsidiarity, each member country was able to choose the type of document they could use for passing on the information. No two member countries have chosen exactly the same method. Invoices, delivery notes, advice notes, labels and certificates are all used by one or more countries. Often only one language, that of the originating country, is used and the wide use of abbreviations compounds the difficulties.

Because there is no prospect of the Directive being changed to harmonise the documentation in the near future, a brief description of the documentation used by each country has been included in this website. Please press the country flag below for the description for each country.

Each country’s web page also includes some details of the nursery association, the implementing legislation and some pictures of typical nurseries in the country.

These pages have been prepared by the Secretary from documents sent by members, forestry authorities and from web-pages. They express the views of the Secretary. The Association cannot be held responsible for any errors inadvertently included.