Following the adoption of a regulation permitting voluntary licensing schemes, in December 2005, the EU now has the mandate to negotiate Voluntary Partnership Agreements (VPAs) with key producer countries on the issues of deforestation and illegal logging around the world. Although WWF has high hopes for the important ongoing negotiations with countries such as Cameroon, Ghana, Gabon, Congo Indonesia, and Malaysia, WWF has a number of concerns with regards to the VPAs.

• Reach. The VPA process will only have a significant impact on the level of illegal logging in partner countries if it is rolled out across the entire country to include all exports, imports and domestic timber production·
• Laundering. If the partner country has no national legislation prohibiting the importation of illegally logged timber and wood products, then timber logged illegally in a non-partner country could enter Europe legally via the partner country, accompanied by a valid legality licence. Importation to Europe would be legal, despite the timber's illegal origins. The timber would, in effect, have been laundered.·
• Circumvention. VPAs will only cover direct trade between the VPA country and the EU Member States. Timber and wood products imported via a third country, such as China, are not addressed. ·
• Product coverage. The current VPA process does not address the imports of pulp, paper and furniture, even though more than 40% of commercial timber harvesting goes towards paper production.·
• Undermining legitimate business. The voluntary nature of these proposals means that timber and wood products that fall outside these VPAs can still enter the EU market unchecked. Progressive companies operating legitimately will therefore continue to be undercut by other, less scrupulous operators.

WWF is also concerned that the negotiations omit important principles necessary to ensure the long term effectiveness of the negotiations.

WWF asked the governments' position on what WWF considers to be basic principles for the VPA negotiations and found that many of the below principles find support within the EU and Swiss governments. This represents a significant shift towards recognising the importance of the voluntary partnership negotiations being based on an underlying set of fair and transparent principles aimed at ensuring legal and sustainable forest management. These overall scores may reflect a recognition that the principles within the existing negotiating mandate do not go far enough.

• 93% of the surveyed governments support that Partnership agreements must commit producer countries to a time-bound action programme that will tackle the weaknesses in forest sector governance and that will lead ultimately to Sustainable Forest Management (SFM).


• 89% of the surveyed governments support that Partnership agreements must include as a first step a participatory review of all the partner country's forest related laws (including human rights law, customary law etc.


• 93% of surveyed governments support that partnership agreements must have effective and transparent verification and monitoring procedures.


• 74% of surveyed governments support that partnership agreements must be based on the support of a representative range of non-state actors (minimum a balance between environmental/social/ economic actors)


• 63% of surveyed governments support that a partnership agreement must include mandatory licensing of all wood based exports to any destination, not only the EU in order to avoid laundering illegal wood through third countries.

• Use the above principles as a minimum in the VPA negotiations
• Ensure all wood products are covered in the VPA negotiations
• Put in place legislation to underpin the voluntary partnership agreements and to support those who want to do the right thing.

• The EU governments should encourage the EC to adopt these principles in its negotiation of partnership agreements, to ensure effective VPA agreements in the long term.