European forestry systems mirror social-ecological diversity but closer-to-nature forest management and landscape planning are also required.

New forest-related policies lead to conflicts among different forest benefits, actors and stakeholders. This requires multiple tools for forest management and landscape planning towards multifunctional landscapes. We first explore if the relative proportions of clearcutting (CC) and continuous cover forestry (CCF) as the two major contrasting traditional forest management systems in Europe can be explained by the complex net effect of biophysical, anthropogenic and social system variables. We then review mismatches between CC and CCF methods, and the tools required by new policies advocating multifunctional forest landscapes. The first three components of a multivariate analysis (PCA) explained 66% of the variation in the dataset. There were four main clusters of countries: (1) Nordic-Baltic boreal, (2) continental temperate lowland, (3) mountain, and (4) southern and southeastern Europe. The incidence of CCF in the 26 countries was correlated to both PC1 and PC2, and a multiple regression explained 53% of the variation in applying CCF. However, key mismatches between the application of CC and CCF and policy about multifunctional landscapes include difficulties to secure biodiversity conservation and ecosystem resilience. Therefore, new “closer-to-nature” forest management systems and triad landscape planning are also necessary.