Yokohama: The European Commission asked EU governments on 11 September 2026 to authorise negotiations on a treaty replacing the International Tropical Timber Agreement, the 2006 pact that runs out for good on 6 December 2029 and cannot be extended again. Negotiators will open the first preparatory session on tropical timber in this Japanese port city in November.
The agreement underpins the International Tropical Timber Organisation, whose members between them hold roughly 80 percent of the world’s tropical forests and account for more than 90 percent of trade in timber and timber products. The body collects production and trade statistics, writes guidelines for sustainable forest management and helps producer countries apply them.
Brussels holds an unusually strong hand in that room. The Commission pays the largest assessed contribution to the organisation’s administrative budget on behalf of every member state, some USD 1.2 million for 2026, and the Union commands the highest number of votes among consumer members.
The calendar explains the hurry. The 61st International Tropical Timber Council decided that the first meeting of the preparatory committee will run alongside the 62nd Council session in Yokohama from 9 to 14 November 2026. Without a mandate from ministers, EU negotiators would sit through that week with no authority to speak for the bloc.
Washington complicated the arithmetic in July. The United States notified the United Nations depositary on 23 July 2026 that it is withdrawing from the organisation, part of a broader exit from multilateral bodies. That departure removes a major consumer member and sharpens a weakness the Commission names openly: a significant group of countries pays nothing, and participation in Council sessions keeps thinning.
So the Commission wants reassurances before it ties the Union to anything. Its text warns governments that any later proposal to sign a successor treaty may hinge on fixing non-payment and low attendance, either inside the negotiated agreement or alongside it. It also leaves room to drop the treaty format altogether should members prefer a lighter instrument that is not a treaty at all. The full text sits in the Council document transmitting COM(2026) 454.
Lawyers will notice the legal basis. The Commission grounds the mandate in Article 207(4) on the common commercial policy and Article 192(1) on the environment at once, and states that neither objective is ancillary to the other. That dual footing keeps the file inside exclusive Union competence and spares a successor agreement the national ratification ordeal that mixed agreements face.
The dossier also has to sit beside rules European importers already live under. The regulation on deforestation-free products obliges companies to run due diligence on supply chains for wood among other commodities, and the recommendation lists the Forest Strategy for 2030, the revised LULUCF rules and the FLEGT action plan as policies a new tropical timber treaty must not cut across.
Ministers will now route the file to the Council Working Party on Commodities, which the draft decision designates as the special committee supervising the Commission as negotiator. Capitals seeking firmer language on sustainable forest management, or a harder line on unpaid dues, will argue it out there before delegates fly to Japan.
