National Forest Programmes represent a wide range of approaches to the process of planning, programming and implementing forest activities in a country. National Forest Programmes are regulated by international rules that highlight the importance of public participation aimed at developing cooperation among stakeholders and at improving the sustainability of forest management. A semi-structured questionnaire was administered by email to 30 national experts involved in the COST Action FP1207. The participatory process was analysed through some key elements: level of participation, structure, strengths and weaknesses of the participatory process. The results show that the most common level of participation is cooperation in all phases of the participatory process and that, overall, the strengths (e.g. review of problems and policies, cross sector approach) outweigh the weaknesses (e.g. time and efforts consuming, lack of trust). The results of the questionnaire bring out some key elements which are useful to analyse the decision making process.