The European Parliament has voted to end the European Union’s timber oversight partnership with Liberia, bringing to a close a decade-long initiative to reform one of West Africa’s most opaque forest sectors through development cooperation. According to environmental news outlet Mongabay, the motion passed with 92 per cent support, paving the way for Brussels to formally terminate the agreement.
Signed in December 2013, the Voluntary Partnership Agreement (VPA) formed a cornerstone of the EU’s Forest Law Enforcement, Governance and Trade (FLEGT) Action Plan, which aimed to combat illegal logging and deforestation in timber-exporting countries. The agreement funded timber-tracking and transparency systems in Liberia and required the government to certify that every log exported through its ports had been harvested legally.
As part of the deal, Liberia also pledged to give local environmental organisations a formal role in monitoring compliance, introducing independent oversight into a sector long dogged by allegations of corruption and poor governance. Eight other countries entered similar agreements with the EU, including four in Africa.
More than ten years later, however, the agreement’s central objective—a licensing system that would certify Liberian timber as legally verified for access to EU markets—was never realised. After years of missed milestones, the European Commission recommended last year that the partnership be brought to an end.
Environmental organisations opposed the recommendation, arguing that despite its shortcomings, the agreement had significantly improved transparency in Liberia’s notoriously closed timber sector. A coalition of civil society organisations, including ten from Liberia, said the process had established governance mechanisms that had taken years to develop.
Former Liberian president and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf also joined the campaign last year, warning in a Guardian opinion piece that a return to unchecked logging could cost the country far more than its forests. Her appeal, like the broader civil society campaign, failed to persuade the Parliament’s centre-right majority.
According to Jean-Marc Germain, a French member of the European Parliament, the vote on 17 June exposed clear political divisions within the chamber. The Socialists and Democrats opposed ending the agreement, he said, but were outvoted by a coalition of centrist, right-wing and far-right parties that backed its termination.
The decision follows the EU’s cancellation of a similar partnership with Cameroon last year and reflects a broader shift away from governance-led reform towards trade-based compliance under new deforestation rules. Those rules, established through the EU Deforestation Regulation, are due to take effect in December after Brussels agreed at the last minute to postpone their implementation by twelve months.
According to the Brussels-based NGO FERN, the VPAs are likely to be replaced by less demanding Forest Partnerships, which impose fewer obligations and do not provide a formal oversight role for community watchdogs. Alexandra Benjamin, FERN’s forest governance policy adviser, said there has been no structured mechanism for civil society to help shape those new partnerships.
