diff --git a/src/transformers/utils/__init__.py b/src/transformers/utils/__init__.py
index 4d27e3084b766f..8afe32403289a6 100644
--- a/src/transformers/utils/__init__.py
+++ b/src/transformers/utils/__init__.py
@@ -184,9 +184,6 @@
         from . import sentencepiece_model_pb2
     else:
         from . import sentencepiece_model_pb2_new as sentencepiece_model_pb2
-else:
-    # just to get the expected `No module named 'google.protobuf'` error
-    from . import sentencepiece_model_pb2
 
 
 WEIGHTS_NAME = "pytorch_model.bin"