To address the critical consequences of climate change and achieve the environmental goals of Agenda 2030, the former European Commission launched the European Green Deal. To enhance the sustainable use of forests, the flagship initiative – the EU Forest Strategy for 2030 – aims to mitigate climate change and halt biodiversity loss across Europe by leveraging the role of forests. As one of Europe's most forested countries, Sweden has a significant responsibility in meeting these targets. Our study examined the perspectives and positions of Swedish parliamentary parties on the strategy and upcoming regulations, emphasizing the socio-economic functions of forests and their protection, restoration, and enlargement. The arguments were analyzed using an argumentative analysis targeting three main strategies: the adversarial strategy, the dismissive strategy, and the accommodative strategy. This analysis shows whether a political party integrates, dismisses, or ignores the political issue in their agenda. The results show that most Swedish parties expressed explicit negative concerns, arguing that the strategy threatens national sovereignty and current forest management practices of rotational forestry. Left-wing parties and the Green Party tended to integrate the issue, right-wing parties were more likely to ignore or dismiss it, and centrist parties used all three strategies, leaning towards ignoring and dismissing. By understanding these differences, we can better anticipate the implications for current and upcoming regulatory discussions and how they might shape Sweden's stance on future EU policy developments.

Forest biodiversity can be retained by setting aside protected forest areas for nature conservation or by integrating conservation measures in managed forests. Societal demands towards forest ecosystem services have changed in favour of conservation ideas, and there is a move towards more participatory forest policymaking. This paper investigated the relation between participatory decision-making and forest management developments within twelve European countries. We assessed a) the development of integration and segregation of nature conservation in forest management and the wider forest landscape, and b) how different groups participate in forest-related policy and management planning. Methodologically, we combined natural and social science to explore if the link between the two could be assessed by means of a multi-expert and multi-disciplinary assessment. We concluded that, in the twelve studied territories, integration of nature conservation in forest management was the dominating paradigm, while there is a simultaneous increase in both the areas set aside for nature conservation and the felling to increment ratio. At the same time, there was a noticeable increase in the attention given to nature conservation aspects in the formulation of forest policy. However, the relationship between participation in forest policy development/implementation and integrating nature conservation into forest management was found to be complex. We proposed directions for future research in this domain.