On 19 October 2018, a voluntary partnership agreement (VPA) between the European Union and the Socialist Republic of Vietnam on forest law enforcement, governance and trade (FLEGT) was signed in Brussels in the margins of the EU-ASEM summit.  The aim of the agreement is to stop illegal logging and, through the FLEGT licensing scheme, to guarantee that timber imported into the EU from Vietnam is legally harvested. This is the second VPA that the EU has concluded with an Asian country after Indonesia and is particularly significant given the importance of Vietnam in the global ...