This article analyses the Voluntary Partnership Agreement (VPA) between the European Union (EU) and Vietnam as a form of postpoliticisation. In addition to their primary objective the governing of bilateral timber trade value chains, VPAs also entail an element of democratisation, as they are conditional upon stakeholder and civil society participation. Building on poststructuralist discourse-theory (PDT) and Erik Swyngedouw's notion of ‘the postpolitical condition’, this article asks how (un)invited non-state actor participation in the EU-Vietnam VPA discursively (re-)articulates and (de)politicises problems and solutions. The article finds that invited participation in Vietnam was characterised by consensual and technocratic governance practices and a discursive foreclosure of problems and solutions. The VPA's consensual space was ruptured by uninvited participation by several Cambodia NGOs, who questioned the VPA's rationalistic logics of legality verification and certification for imported timber products. These concerns were dismissed as nonsensical by the EU, demonstrating the postpolitical discursive foreclosure for non-state actor engagement. The research is based on 33 interviews with respondents in Vietnam and Europe as well as a document analysis of the VPA text and annexes, EU communications, NGO advocacy materials and media appearances by Cambodian NGOs.

本文分析了作为后政治化形式的欧盟（EU）与越南之间的自愿伙伴关系协议（VPA）。VPA除了其主要目标是管理双边木材贸易价值链外，还涉及民主化的要素，因为它们以利益相关者和民间社会的参与为条件。本文以后结构主义话语理论（PDT）和Erik Swyngedouw的“后政治条件”概念为基础，提出了如何（非）邀请非国家参与者参加欧盟-越南VPA的话语性（重新）表达和（去政治化）表达的问题。问题和解决方案。文章发现被邀请参与越南的特点是自愿和技术官僚的治理做法以及对问题和解决方案的谨慎地取消抵押品赎回权。柬埔寨几个非政府组织的不请自来的参与破坏了VPA的共识空间，他们质疑VPA的合法性逻辑，即对进口木材产品进行合法性验证和认证。这些担忧被欧盟视作荒谬，表明了非国家行为者参与的后政治性话语止赎。该研究基于对越南和欧洲受访者的33次访谈，以及对VPA文本和附件，欧盟来文，非政府组织宣传材料以及柬埔寨非政府组织媒体露面的文件分析。