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fter years of intense negotiation, the EU recently declared that Indonesia had achieved full implementation of its timber legality system (SVLK), setting the country on a path to become a future world leader in legal timber.

On Thursday, President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo, European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker and European Council President Donald Tusk announced that the EU and Indonesia were ready to move toward the start of the first ever Forest Law Enforcement Governance and Trade (FLEGT) licensing scheme. By producing FLEGT-licensed timber, considered by the EU to have been harvested legally. Indonesian timber products will gain free access into the EU market.

“The EU welcomes the implementation for all types of wood products of the Indonesian Timber Legality Assurance System,” the European Council said, as reported in a press statement. “We look forward to the first shipment of FLEGT-certified timber from Indonesia in the coming months”.

SVLK is the first national timber legality assurance system in the world to be implemented based on FLEGT principles.

Both parties have been working together for the full implementation of the SVLK as laid out in the Indonesia-EU Voluntary Partnership Agreement, ratified in 2014.

Indonesia has made significant strides in ensuring the legality of its timber products. In 2002, 20 percent of Indonesian timber was considered legal. Today over 90 percent of the country’s timber exports are said to be sourced from independently audited factories and forests, covering more than 20 million hectares of forest and more than 1,700 forest industries.

Indonesia experienced a setback to its timber certification when Trade Minister Thomas Lembong issued Regulation No. 89/2015 in August last year, allowing for the export of 15 downstream timber products, including furniture, without SVLK certification.

The Trade Ministry recently revised the regulation. The new regulation, No. 25/2016, had revoked the exemption and this, according to the ministry’s agriculture and forestry product export director, Nurlaila Nur Muhammad, had allowed the EU to declare that Indonesia had met all requirements of their agreement.

Several steps need to be taken before the FLEGT comes into full effect and thus allows Indonesian timber to automatically pass the due-diligence examination usually required before products enter the EU market.

“We still have some homework and the European Commission has one month to further discuss the matter. Even though both leaders have spoken, to date they’re only statements. The EU parliament has a maximum of three months to agree. So we can expect the FLEGT to come into force by August,” said Agus Justianto, the Environment and Forestry Ministry’s natural resource economy expert.

If the EU agrees, both parties will then decide on the schedule of the first FLEGT-certified timber export from Indonesia, he added.

FLEGT implementation is expected to provide Indonesia, which holds a 40 percent market share in the EU’s tropical timber market, an edge over its competitors, such as Vietnam.

“Right now Indonesia is the only country in the world that has met FLEGT implementation requirements. Therefore, where else can the EU look for legal timber? Vietnam is still way behind us,” said Agus Sarsito, Indonesia’s FLEGT VPA chief negotiator.