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Over the last 25 years, the post-communist countries have encompassed important changes in ownership because of the transition from a centralised regime to an open market economy. Following the implementation of three different land restitution laws, almost 51% of the Romanian forestlands are currently in non-state ownership. The paper uses the DPSIR (Driving Forces-Pressures-State-Impacts-Responses) framework to analyse the forest restitution governance process and its impact on resource management outcomes. We have analysed the social and political environment of the forest restitution (Driving forces), the current and the past structure of the private forests (State), the ecological, economic and social effects of restitution (Impacts) and the institutional tools used in private forests (Responses). Data collection techniques combined the scrutiny of literature on forest privatisation with a case study analysis based on remote sensing, field work inventory and questionnaires. The study analyses the situation of small scale forest tenures (less than 1 ha) given back to the former owners per the first law of land restitution (Law 18/1991). The results show that the forest restitution has been used as a trade-off between politicians' interest in winning political capital and owner's interest in getting short-term benefits from the forest. Despite the highly regulatory setting aiming to preserve the traditional rules of forest management, anthropic disturbances have affected on a large scale the private managed forests, while the policy responses were not able to encompass the new challenges brought by the changing ownership structure. The analysis concludes that the current policy responses are strengthening even more the regulatory framework but as reaction to a new policy goal: to limit the law infringements and the corruption created by the failure of enforcing the command and control instruments.

Forest ownership is changing in Europe. Reasons include recent institutional changes in Eastern Europe, changing lifestyles of non-agricultural owners and afforestation. At present, there is little comparative analysis across Europe, and the implications that these changes have for forest management and for the fulfilment and redefinition of policy objectives have not been addressed systematically. This paper has been developed in the framework of a European research network on forest ownership change, based on conceptual work, literature reviews and empirical evidence from 28 European countries. It aims to provide an overview of the state of knowledge, to discuss relevant issues and provide conceptual and practical foundations for future research, forest management approaches, and policy making. In particular, it discusses possible approaches for classifying forest ownership types and understandings of “new” forest ownership. One important insight is that the division into public and private forests is not as clear as often assumed and that an additional category of semi-public (or semi-private) forms of forest ownership would be desirable. Another recommendation is that the concepts of “new forest owners” vs. “new forest owner types” should be differentiated more consciously. We observe that, in research and policy practice, the mutual relations between forest ownership structure and policies are often neglected, for instance, how policies may directly and indirectly influence ownership development, and what different ownership categories mean for the fulfilment of policy goals. Finally, we propose that better support should be provided for the development of new, adapted forest management approaches for emerging forest owner types. Forest ownership deserves greater attention in studies dealing with forest policy or forest management.