EUROPE — Suffering from an adverse macro-economic context, production of pulp and paper in Europe has experienced a decline in 2023. It was due to several compounding external factors: a poor economic environment, destocking and still high energy costs, as shown by the Cepi preliminary statistics report. With mid-term global economic trends impacting the demand for paper and board and exacerbating destocking, consumption fell by 15.3% in 2023 and, in turn, production in the paper and board industry suffered a second consecutive year of contraction, decreasing by 12.8%. After a year 2022 marked by sky high energy prices, the decrease in production in 2023 continues to be more pronounced even than it was during the Covid-19 crisis (-4.7% in 2020). …These global trends have been worsened by the comparative high costs in Europe for production inputs, and notably energy, which cost continues to be unsustainably high.