Priorities of forest policy of the Ministerial Conference on the Protection of Forests in Europe

The main interest of the FOREST EUROPE (formerly known as the Ministerial Conference on the Protection of Forests in Europe, MCPFE) was to introduce the principles of sustainable forest management in Europe. Topics that linked forestry with the global conventions and agreements were addressed at ministerial conferences. These topics were called priorities. A comparison of ministers speeches from the subsequent conferences with content of the international agreements and documents allowed the selection of 24 priorities (tab.) that appeared 627 times at the conference proceedings. Priorities appearing at the MCPFE process were analysed with the aim of identifying trends of their occurrences. Cluster analysis allowed to categorise different conferences according to their similarities in terms of the emerging priorities (fig. 1). The most closely related were the conferences held in 1998 and 2003 as well as the one held in 2007 and 2011. The conference held in 1990 differed the most from others. The same technique was used to explore similarities and to categorise priority groups. Five most interconnected priority groups were selected (fig. 2). As no permanent linkages between different priorities existed, it was difficult to establish priority groups that were discussed during the following conferences. It was possible, however, to distinguish priority groups that were similar in terms of their appearance, duration or disappearance during the subsequent ministerial summits. Some thematic priorities seemed to be important for individual countries in the longer term than period between the conferences, and those continued to appearing at the ministers speeches during the subsequent summits. The application of statistical methods based on the cluster analysis allows for an appropriate analysis of the MCPFE process.