Sustaining Central Europe’s forest carbon sink: A two-track management framework for LULUCF compliance

In the 2026 inventory, mean EU-27 net removals in the Forest land category (Common Reporting Format, CRF 4.A) declined by 34.6% between the 2010–2014 and 2020–2022 means, from −464.7 to −303.9 Mt CO₂eq yr⁻¹, undermining the EU’s climate objectives under the revised Regulation on land use, land-use change and forestry (LULUCF; EU 2023/839 ). Central Europe (Germany, Poland, Czechia, Austria, Slovakia, Hungary; CE-6) holds 28.5% of the EU-27 binding removal target for 2030 (−88.4 Mt CO₂eq), yet Germany’s forest carbon balance was a net source over 2017–2022 (Thünen comparison), Czechia’s Forest Land (CRF 4.A) was a net source in 2018–2022, and Poland’s 2030 level is met only with additional measures. This review evaluates six strategies to sustain or restore the CE-6 sink. Harvest regime optimisation and reactive disturbance management are the principal interventions able to influence the carbon balance within approximately five years, mainly by preventing further sink decline; the other strategies are essential for post-2030 resilience but act on longer timescales. The assessment therefore yields a two-track approach: a near-term compliance track of harvest restraint and reactive disturbance management to limit sink deterioration before 2030, and immediate initiation of a long-term structural track comprising species conversion and diversification, provenance optimisation, continuous cover forestry transition, soil carbon management, and preventive disturbance management. Implementation requires seed transfer reform, harmonised monitoring, and compensation mechanisms not yet in place. Domestic LULUCF compliance, where territorial gains count regardless of displacement, differs from global mitigation, where timber-market leakage substantially reduces the benefit of harvest-based strategies.