Landesbetrieb Wald und Holz NRW
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Landesbetrieb Wald und Holz NRW |
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| State level | country |
| position | State company |
| Supervisory authority | Ministry for Climate Protection, Environment, Agriculture, Nature and Consumer Protection of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia (MKULNV) |
| founding | 2005 |
| Headquarters | Munster , North Rhine-Westphalia |
| Authority management | Andreas Wiebe |
| Web presence | Homepage of the State Office for Forest and Wood NRW |
The state enterprise forest and wood NRW is a state enterprise of the state North Rhine-Westphalia . It was formed in 2005 from the previous departments of the state forest administration. Further facilities were added later, so that today all of the state's forest- related facilities are integrated into the state's operations. The state enterprise is a special regulatory authority and dependent part of the administration of the state of North Rhine-Westphalia.
tasks
The state company is responsible for the management of the state forest . With 119,000 hectares, this makes up 13 percent of the country's total forest area.
Another task is the sustainable protection and safeguarding of the forests. There are also sovereign tasks such as forest supervision. Another task is providing services for public and private forest owners. Since these services are provided heavily subsidized, an investigation of this business area of state operations by the Federal Cartel Office is expected.
In 2007, the tasks of the upper hunting authority and the forestry experimentation, formerly located at the State Institute for Ecology, Land Management and Forests in North Rhine-Westphalia, were added. This task was given to the ministry because of the dissolution of the upper hunting authority.
Youth forest homes are operated in various places .
State forest administration NRW
The state forest administration of North Rhine-Westphalia consists of some organizational units of the Ministry for Climate Protection, Environment, Agriculture, Nature and Consumer Protection (MKULNV) as well as the state enterprise forest and wood NRW. The latter emerged from the country's administrative reform in 2005. It unites all of the forest departments of the former Higher Forest Authorities of Westphalia and Rhineland, the state forest offices and the forest offices of the Chamber of Agriculture and parts of the State Institute for Ecology, Land Management and Forests (LÖBF).
Organization of state operations
The Landesbetrieb Wald und Holz has a two-tier structure from the headquarters in Münster with the management and the departments as the first tier and the legally dependent branch offices - forest offices - with the specialist areas and the associated forestry districts as the second tier.
Management history
Gerhard Beckmann was appointed the first head of the regional operations in 2005. After there had been disagreements between him and the Ministry of Forestry under Forest Minister Eckhard Uhlenberg (CDU) about how to deal with storm wood after Hurricane Kyrill and the associated delivery contracts, Beckmann took early retirement at the end of 2007 . Thereupon Frank-Dietmar Richter from 1 January 2008 to head the state company ordered . If he had previously played a key role in the restructuring of the state forest administration, his task now consisted in further consolidating the state operation as a unified forest administration. On February 1, 2011, Richter retired.
The search for a successor then led to a political argument. Because NRW Forest Minister Johannes Remmel (Bündnis 90 / Die Grünen) had the current application process stopped. As a result, the new tender no longer required a "university degree in forest sciences, qualification for higher forest service and several years of commercial professional experience in a managerial position". This was heavily criticized by the opposition in the state parliament. She suspected that in this way the opportunity was created to appoint Remmel's green party friend Andreas Wiebe - a graduate civil engineer specializing in hydraulic engineering - to this post.
Headquarters
The management of the state operations consists of the head and his deputy as well as the assigned staff units. The current head of the state operations is Andreas Wiebe, his deputy is Heinrich Barkmeyer, the latter is responsible for coordinating the staff units. The press and public relations, gender equality and information center for East Westphalia-Lippe National Park are directly assigned to the manager of the company. The other staff units and the legal department are assigned to Mr. Barkmeyer, which is controlling, internal auditing, occupational health and safety management, quality and environmental management, the specialists for occupational safety and the company medical service as well as the Arnsberg forest competence location.
Below the management level of the state operations, the head office is divided into several pillars - the departments - whose basic structure is similar to that of the Ministry for Climate Protection, Environment, Agriculture, Nature and Consumer Protection and other state authorities. There are five departments and the "Upper Hunting Authority".
Department I "Central Services" deals with personnel development, procurement, budget and finances as well as the IT area.
All central tasks for the management of the state forest, such as the management of the state's own forestry company, property traffic and timber marketing, are concentrated in department II "State Forestry Operations".
Department III "Private and Corporate Forests" takes on the central tasks in the state operation for the care and advice of private forest owners, forest associations and the forests of other corporations, e.g. B. Churches and municipalities.
Department IV "Sovereignty, Protected Areas, Environmental Education" deals with a. with funding on the basis of EAFRD , the tasks of the state enterprise as a special regulatory authority, i.e. violations of the Federal Forest Act, the State Forest Act, general regulatory law and the penal code, insofar as the jurisdiction results from the location of the action and the laws. The protection of the protected areas in the forests and environmental education are also the responsibility of this department, in which the forest office is also located. The Eifel National Park Forestry Office is subordinate to it.
The department V "Wood Management, Research, Climate Protection", in contrast to the other departments, is not subordinate to this department in the forest offices. However, it is affiliated with the Arnsberg Forest Teaching and Experimental Forestry Office as well as wood competence centers and the ID Wood in Olsberg. The main focus of work is monitoring the wood market, researching the suitability and impact of host tree species, silvicultural methods and the impact of climate change on the forest ecosystem.
Until April 1, 2014, the "Upper Hunting Authority" was also the technical supervisor of the "Lower Hunting Authorities" located in the districts and independent cities, at the State Office for Forest and Wood in North Rhine-Westphalia. The "Upper Hunting Authority" was dissolved by an amendment to the law announced on April 11th. Their tasks were divided between the "lower hunting authorities", the ministry as the "highest hunting authority" and the state office for nature, environmental and consumer protection .
The second stage of the state operation is formed by the 14 regional forest offices, the Eifel National Park Forestry Office and the Arnsberg Forest teaching and experimental forestry office .
The structure of the head office continues within the forest offices, departments I-IV are mirrored here by departments I-IV. With the exception of the central services, the departments are mostly headed by foresters of the higher service . Section II is not represented in all forest offices; due to the low proportion of the state forest of only 13 percent of the total forest area, its management has been limited to a few regional forest offices, the national park forest office and the teaching and experimental forest office. Subject area III, on the other hand, only exists in the regional forest offices, which both special forest offices manage or manage exclusively state forests. The sovereignty of the forest offices is based on the external borders of the rural districts and urban districts in order to simplify cooperation with the local authorities. The boundaries of the forest management districts also largely follow the boundaries of the municipalities.
Territorial areas of the forest offices are in turn in 300 forest management districts divided, which by a respective Revierförster the elevated service or in very rare cases of a highly qualified forestry master are conducted.
The state company employs around 1,300 people.
Authority seat
The seat of the state enterprise and its "head office" called head office is Münster . The Rüttgers government strove to relocate to Arnsberg , it was planned in the event of the dissolution of the Arnsberg district government as part of the administrative reform planned by it in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia. However, the current state government is not pursuing these plans any further. The spatial situation of the authorities in Arnsberg, which does not allow the headquarters to move from Münster while concentrating in one building complex without new buildings or extensive rentals, also spoke against a relocation. Some of the functions or functionaries of the head office of the state enterprise are still based in Arnsberg, and further functionaries of the head office are also housed in other regional forest offices.
Regional forest offices
- Eifel (National Park Forestry Office ), Schleiden-Gemünd
- Hocheifel, Nettersheim
- Rureifel-Jülich Börde, Hürtgenwald
- Rhein-Sieg-Erft, Eitorf
- Bergisches Land, Wipperfürth
- Märkisches Sauerland, Lüdenscheid
- Kurkölnisches Sauerland, Olpe
- Siegen-Wittgenstein, Hilchenbach
- Arnsberg Teaching and Experimental Forestry Office, Arnsberg-Obereimer
- Upper Sauerland, Schmallenberg
- Soest-Sauerland, Ruethen
- Hochstift, Neuenheerse
- Ruhr area, Gelsenkirchen
- Lower Rhine, Wesel
- Münsterland, Münster
- Ostwestfalen-Lippe, Minden
Klausner contracts
The hurricane Kyrill hit the German mainland on the afternoon of January 18, 2007 and moved through the night towards the Baltic Sea and the Baltic States. On the coasts, the storm reached up to 150 km / h in the flat inland areas, spreading up to 110 km / h and in the higher areas with significantly faster gusts. The storm reached its peak gust over the Alps at 225 km / h. As a result of its great extent and strong pressure and temperature gradients, it had a devastating effect on the north and central German forests. The high altitudes of the Sauerland and East Westphalia were particularly hard hit. The storm destroyed large areas of coniferous wood, for historical reasons these consist mainly of spruce in NRW . The state forest administration of North Rhine-Westphalia was faced with the catastrophic consequences of the storm in the forest areas. The considerable amount of so-called calamity wood suggested a collapse in the spruce wood market. Shortly before the storm, the price of spruce logs had reached a long-term high due to good demand and the dwindling stocks in the forests. The reason for the decrease in stocks is primarily the changed forest policy, which has set itself the goal of near-natural forestry and correspondingly stable mixed forests rich in hardwood.
The Ministry for Climate Protection, Environment, Agriculture, Nature Conservation and Consumer Protection initiated measures to eliminate the storm damage and to minimize damage to the timber on the instructions of Minister Uhlenberg . As a result, the ministry concluded a series of long-term supply contracts with six companies in the wood industry against the technical advice of the state forest and wood company in North Rhine-Westphalia in order to maintain a lower price limit. The contracts included considerable delivery quantities of spruce wood from the state and private forests , which should be delivered immediately after the storm, even after a market recovery, to compensate for the acutely higher price . The delivery volume to Klausner alone is estimated at 500,000 solid cubic meters of spruce wood. From a technical point of view, the state company had excluded the possibility of a long-term sustainable delivery of the contractual guaranteed quantities. The sustainable logging volume of the state company only reaches 200,000 cubic meters; nevertheless the ministry concluded the contracts. The protests of the local medium-sized sawmill industry were also not taken into account. After Klausner did not purchase the contractually agreed quantities of wood during the financial and economic crisis in 2007 , the Landesbetrieb Wald und Holz withdrew from the contracts in 2009. Accordingly, all deliveries in the country were stopped.
Litigation
The contracts became known through the filing of a lawsuit by the Klausner Group . Klausner initially sued for the continuation of the contract. The Hamm Higher Regional Court ruled in December 2012 that the resignation was ineffective due to defects in form - the lack of participation by the contract partner Wald-Holz Sauerland, which also supplies wood from private forests, and the lack of a deadline set by the state. Thus, the contracts continued to have validity, despite the suspension of deliveries since 2009 and insufficient wood purchase on the part of the Klausner Group before the ineffective resignation of the state company. As a result of the OLG ruling, Klausner again filed a lawsuit for damages in the amount of 56 million euros. The lawsuit was followed by three further applications in spring 2013 with the aim of receiving lost deliveries of 1.5 million cubic meters. In May 2013 the Klausner group tried to increase the pressure on the state of North Rhine-Westphalia by applying for an injunction against the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, represented by the head of the state operations department, Andreas Wiebe . This request to force the country under threat of punishment against its representatives to deliver spruce wood exclusively to Klausner was rejected. Since then, both parties have tried to reach an amicable agreement, but without achieving a breakthrough. Above all, the state insists on a comprehensible calculation of the damage claimed, which Klausner has so far owed. Klausner, for his part, missed the country's will to try to reach an agreement.
Nevertheless, in November 2013 both parties concluded a new contract at customary market conditions for the delivery of 10,000 solid meters of spruce wood. A contract for an additional 10,000 cubic meters was signed on March 5, 2014. In the case of delivery claims from the old contracts, the amount should be offset against these. Since 2009 these are the only deliveries to Klausner by the state of North Rhine-Westphalia. The Chamber of the Regional Court of Münster decided on February 18, 2014 to take over the legal dispute due to the complexity of the legal dispute and invited the parties to the hearing on August 28, 2014.
State aid proceedings
The country also takes the view that the treaties violate European Union state aid and antitrust law. Accordingly, on July 19, 2013 , the Federal Republic of Germany notified the European Commission - as guardian of competition - of a violation of Article 108 of the TFEU , the receipt of which the Commission also confirmed by email on July 19. The commission submitted three expert reports by the Klausner company to the Federal Republic of Germany for comments with a deadline of May 8, 2014.
In October 2013, an additional 25 sawmills lodged a state aid complaint with the Commission about the granting of illegal state aid to Klausner. Both procedures are ongoing, the MKULNV assumes that both procedures will be decided uniformly. A date for a decision is unknown. In its statement for the Environment Committee of the State Parliament , the Ministry refers to a recent decision by the Commission on a similar matter regarding a framework supply contract between the State of Brandenburg and HoKaWe Eberswalde . Here the Commission ordered the contract to be reversed.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Archived copy ( Memento of the original from March 5, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ NN: New head of the Landesbetrieb Wald . In: Westfälische Nachrichten of January 5, 2008
- ↑ NN: Frank-Dietmar Richter is the new head of the forest and wood office in North Rhine-Westphalia ( page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. ; Press release of the State Office for Forest and Wood NRW from January 4th, 2008; Retrieved February 19, 2011
- ^ NN: Frank-Dietmar Richter retired ; Press release from the State Office for Forest and Wood NRW, www.forstpraxis.de from February 15, 2011; Retrieved February 19, 2011
- ↑ Stefan Werding: The head of the forester does not have to be a forester . In: Westfälische Nachrichten , online version of April 8, 2011; Retrieved May 23, 2011
- ↑ a b c Lorenz Redicker: Timber supply contracts valid - sawmill operators in the Sauerland fear for their existence. The West, December 3, 2012, accessed April 7, 2014 .
- ↑ http://www.wa.de/nachrichten/nrw/unerfuellbare-kyrill-vertraege-bedrohen-holzindustrie-2855323.html
- ↑ Holzmulti claims all wood from North Rhine-Westphalia ( Memento from April 26, 2013 in the Internet Archive ), WDR from April 23, 2013
- ↑ a b c d Proceedings of the claim for damages by the Klausner company against the state of North Rhine-Westphalia. (PDF) Ministry for Climate Protection, Environment, Agriculture, Nature and Consumer Protection of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia, March 28, 2014, accessed on August 7, 2014 .
