Defectively conducted forest management manifested in illegal harvesting not only violates law in the European Union and in the country of harvest, but has also consequences in the economic, environmental and social sphere. Although currently the European Union does not lead a common forestry policy, but the EU’s policy of sustainable development, environmental protection and a range of policies and initiatives are designed to protect forest resources within the EU and in third countries. It should be noted that currently the approach in the field of forestry is changing from the previous model of monofunctional raw material economy only, to the concept of sustainable, multi-purpose approach. The purpose of this article is to present, on the basis of EU law, systemic and organizational determinants of control and supervision of the acquisition and trade of timber as an essential element of the system preventing degradation of nature and ensuring proper forest management in the European Union and Poland. EU law regulate precisely the objectives, principles, criteria, forms and scope of such controls, which proves the importance of this kind of approach to ensure sustainable forest management. The adopted model of control, in systemic terms, provides for the participation of both public authorities, ie. The Commission, the competent authorities of the Member States, as well as external entities (monitoring organizations and operators who place timber and derived products on the market), whereby those entities are closely related to the timber tradesector. The purpose of such control is primarily evaluation of the proper functioning of the due diligence system, which primary objective is to prevent illegal logging and placing on the market.