Jun 09, 2014. /Lesprom Network/.
Malaysia started
negotiating with the EU in 2006 on a Voluntary Partnership Agreement (VPA)
under the EU Forest Law Enforcement, Governance and Trade (FLEGT) initiative. Eight
years later the EU-Malaysia VPA is still elusive however, some 60 experts
recently gathered in Kuala Lumpur for two meetings
one of which was the Joint Expert Meeting of stakeholders from EU and Malaysia to finalise the
Malaysian Timber Legality Assurance System (TLAS), ITTO reported.
This was followed
by a meeting of the Technical Working Group which looked into the various
outstanding issues of the TLAS and VPA terms.
The experts felt
that all outstanding issues could be settled in time for the VPA to be signed
by Peninsular Malaysia and Sabah in early 2015.
