Nordic oil and logging lobbyists repeatedly targeted a Finnish EU commissioner to influence rules in a way that could allow more trees to be burned for electricity generation, openDemocracy can reveal.
Jutta Urpilainen, the commissioner for international partnerships, was extensively lobbied on EU environmental issues between 2020 and 2021 – even though her mandate did not include the environment, climate change or forestry in Europe.
Urpilainen’s department received so many requests – including from two of Finland's biggest companies and key Nordic forest and bioenergy associations – that the EU Commission refused to release more than a fraction of them to openDemocracy, citing the excessive workload involved.
