The European Commission wants to monitor Europe's forests in the face of climate change in a standardized manner by combining and harmonizing various existing monitoring systems. Although the proposal is generally met with approval in the scientific community, opinions differ on the details, as an opinion article by 20 forest researchers in "Forest Ecology and Management" shows. In their opinion, however, data integration must go much further than previously planned. For example, it is planned to better coordinate and align the national forest inventories of the EU member states and to link their data with that of satellite remote sensing. However, the plan ignores essential sources such as the Long-Term Forest Ecosystem Research (LWF) in Switzerland, which focuses on the health of the forests. Another important addition would be the Carbon Observatory (ICOS), which measures the flows of carbon between ecosystems and the atmosphere.