José I. Barredo

Abstract The European Union (EU) climate policies rely on a functioning forest carbon sink. Forests cover about 40% of the EU area and have absorbed about 436 Mt of carbon dioxide equivalent per year between 1990 and 2022, which is about 10% of the EU’s anthropogenic emissions. However, the ability of forests to act as carbon sinks is rapidly declining owing to increasing natural and anthropogenic pressures, threatening the EU’s climate goals and calling for prompt actions.

INTRODUCTION Primary forests are important for biodiversity and the provision of ecosystem services (Mikoláš et al., 2023; Paillet et al., 2010; Potapov et al., 2017; Sabatini et al., 2021a). These forests are home to endangered and endemic species (Eckelt et al., 2018), offer refugia (Vandekerkhove et al., 2011), and provide critical climate regulation services (Dellasala et al., 2020; Keith et al., 2009).

Abstract Covering 35% of Europe’s land area, forest ecosystems play a crucial role in safeguarding biodiversity and mitigating climate change. Yet, forest degradation continues to undermine key ecosystem services that forests deliver to society. Here we provide a spatially explicit assessment of the condition of forest ecosystems in Europe following a United Nations global statistical standard on ecosystem accounting, adopted in March 2021.