Only a few sensitive agricultural products are not fully liberalised, but the EU has offered access to Vietnamese exports through tariff quotas: rice, sweet maize, garlic, mushrooms, sugar and sweet products, cassava starch, surimi and canned tuna. The EU and Vietnam have agreed on a robust and comprehensive chapter on trade and sustainable development, which contains an exhaustive list of commitments, including: negotiations for a free trade agreement were formally concluded in Brussels in December 2015. The signature still needs to take place for the free trade agreement to enter into force. The legal revision of the negotiated text is ongoing, followed by a translation into Vietnamese and the official EU languages. The European Commission will then present a proposal for approval of the agreement to the Heads of State and Government of the EU countries at the Council of Ministers. After the green light from the Heads of State and Government, the free trade agreement will be sent to the European Parliament (EP) to initiate the ratification procedure. For now, the text is expected to be submitted to the EP for approval in the second half of 2018. The PCA provides that human rights, democracy and the rule of law are “essential elements” in the overall relationship between the EU and Vietnam. Therefore, the link between the Free Trade Agreement and the PCA is important to ensure that human rights are also part of the trade relationship between the parties. Overall, ASEAN is the EU`s third largest trading partner outside Europe (after the US and China).
Ensuring better access for EU exporters to the dynamic ASEAN market is a priority for the EU. Negotiations for an EU-ASEAN trade and investment agreement between the regions started in 2007 and were interrupted by mutual agreement in 2009 to become a bilateral negotiating format. These bilateral trade and investment agreements were conceived as building blocks for a future agreement between the regions. The agreement will allow new GIs to be added in the future. The agreement allows EU companies to apply for public contracts, including with Vietnamese ministries, including infrastructure such as roads and ports, major state-owned enterprises such as the electricity distribution company and the national railway operator, state hospitals and the two main Vietnamese cities of Hanoi and Ho Chi Min City. For more information on the EU Free Trade Agreement, see the press release on the EU-Vietnam Free Trade Agreement; read the full text of the EU-Vietnam Free Trade Agreement; or find out more about the economic relations between Vietnam and the EU. Vietnam has concluded free trade agreements with many countries in the region, such as Japan, South Korea, etc. Another important free trade agreement in which Vietnam participates is the Trans-Pacific Partnership. It concerns countries bordering the Pacific Ocean, such as Japan, Chile, Canada and Australia. With the United States withdrawing from the negotiations, the remaining eleven countries continued negotiations and agreed on the new Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP). The importance of the CPTPP for Vietnam is much lower than the TPP, given that Vietnam had already concluded FTA agreements with the remaining eleven countries, either bilaterally or through the ASEAN Pact.
The agreements must now be ratified by the Vietnamese National Assembly and, in the case of the Investment Protection Agreement, by EU member states. Vietnam | Brussels, 24 September 2018 – Updated with the final text of 18 June 2020 The Free Trade Agreement establishes a framework to resolve future disputes between the EU and Vietnam over the interpretation and implementation of the agreement. It applies to most areas of the agreement and, in many ways, it is faster and more efficient than the dispute settlement mechanism in the WTO. The bilateral trade and investment agreements concluded by the EU in March 2020 with Vietnam and the trade agreement are expected to enter into force within the summer of Vietnam`s final ratification. The agreements with Vietnam are, after those with Singapore, the second between the EU and a Southeast Asian country, and provide stepping stones for increased engagement between the EU and the region. . . .