Regulating the Production, Regulating the Market

The chapter highlights the different aspects of the regulation in the international timber sector. The international economic depression of 1929 accelerated the discussions that started in the late 1920s on the regulation of production and possibly the cartelization of the industry. The League of Nations was also part of this discussion and offered institutional support for developing the first organizational forms to coordinate the European timber economy, the Comité International du Bois (CIB). The chapter explains in detail the protracted and not conclusive negotiations between the Soviet Union, Sweden, and Finland for a cartel in the first half of the 1930s. It then deals with the successful proposal to establish a larger organization, the European Timber Exporters’ Convention (ETEC), officially born in November 1935, with many more countries (Finland, USSR, Sweden, Poland, Austria, Romania, Yugoslavia, Latvia, and Czechoslovakia) for a quota production of softwood.