BELGIUM: Greenpeace activists occupied a new EU building in Brussels yesterday in protest at the use of rainforest timber in the construction work.
About 50 demonstrators entered the new offices of the Economic and Social Committee - a long-standing EU advisory body - complaining that contractors have been fitting illegal wood from the ancient forests of Indonesia.
The destruction of the rainforests threatens the survival of the orangutan and the Sumatran tiger, said a Greenpeace spokesman, as climbers scaled the building and draped a banner reading: "EU: Stop Illegal Timber".
Greenpeace claims the same illegal wood has also been used in the refurbished Commission headquarters building which is expected to be ready for use later this year.
At the Economic and Social Committee's new headquarters nearby, Indonesian rainforest plywood is providing walls and flooring.
The plywood was supplied by companies known to have been trading in illegal timber, according to Greenpeace.
The activists were trying to replace rainforest wood with environmentally-friendly timber certified by the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC). They also tried to use the same environmentally-friendly timber to blockade the entrance.
Greenpeace campaigner Mr Andy Tait said: "The EU is responsible for trashing the last rainforests of Indonesia. These rainforests should be home to orang utans and tigers, not Brussels bureaucrats in plush offices.
"If these forests and the endangered species they support are to have any kind of future, the EU must act to stop the trade in illegal timber and clean up its timber-buying."
But Mr Eric Mamer, a spokesman for the commission, rejected the charges of double standards. The commission had been assured that only environmentally sound wood would be used.
He said it shared Greenpeace's concern and would ask the Belgian contractor to investigate.
Greenpeace says Indonesia's rainforest is disappearing fast - an area the size of Belgium is destroyed every year.
That exposes wildlife, including the orangutan, whose numbers have halved in just 10 years, and the Sumatran tiger, of which only 500 remain.