President of the European Council visits Vietnam
At the invitation of President Truong Tan Sang, President of the European Council Herman Van Rompuy and his wife will pay an official visit to Vietnam from October 31 to November 2, 2012.
This is the first visit of the President of the European Council to Vietnam since the two sides established diplomatic relations in 1990.
The European Union (EU) currently consists of 27 member countries, with a population of about 500 million people, accounting for 7.3% of the world with an average income per capita of 34,000 USD/person/year, GDP in 2011 reached 17.69 trillion USD. The EU is a unique and important economic and political entity in the world with a deep level of connection.
Basically, the EU has the main institutions: the European Council, the Council of Ministers, the European Parliament, the European Commission and the European Court of Justice. The European Council is the highest authority of the EU, consisting of the leaders of the 27 member states, the President of the European Council and the President of the European Commission (EC). The Council sets the political direction and priorities for the whole bloc. The decisions of the European Council are mainly adopted by consensus...
In 1996, the EU officially opened a representative mission in Hanoi. Since then, the bilateral relationship has entered a framework, developing rapidly in both breadth and depth. The EU has become one of Vietnam's leading important partners in many fields, especially economics, trade and investment, making a positive contribution to Vietnam's socio-economic development and international economic integration.
The rapid development of Vietnam-EU relations requires the construction of a new cooperation framework, reflecting the strongly developing partnership and building a new legal framework to replace the 1995 Vietnam-EC Framework Agreement. In that spirit, in June 2005, the Prime Minister approved the Master Plan on Vietnam-EU relations until 2010 and orientations to 2015, advocating the construction of "an equal partnership, comprehensive and long-term cooperation between Vietnam and the European Union for peace and development."
After 9 rounds of negotiations (from June 2008 to October 2010), on October 4, 2010, the Comprehensive Partnership and Cooperation Agreement (PCA) was initialed on the sidelines of the ASEM-8 Conference in Belgium, witnessed by Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung and EC President Barroso.
On June 27, 2012, Foreign Minister Pham Binh Minh and the EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy officially signed the PCA in Brussels, Belgium. The PCA between Vietnam and the EU marks a new milestone in bilateral cooperation, demonstrating the great and extensive developments in Vietnam-EU relations over the past 20 years, while creating a legal basis to bring Vietnam-EU cooperation to a new stage with a wider scope and deeper level of cooperation.
During meetings and delegation exchanges, senior leaders of both sides always affirmed the importance of bilateral relations, wished to strengthen multi-faceted cooperation commensurate with the potential and position of both sides, and regularly held meetings and visits to each other.
On the Vietnamese side: Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung visited the EC (October 2010); National Assembly Chairman Nguyen Sinh Hung visited the European Parliament (EP) (December 2011); Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung met with President of the European Council Herman Van Rompuy and President of the EC Barosso on the sidelines of the Nuclear Security Summit in Seoul, South Korea; Foreign Minister Pham Binh Minh met with EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Catherine Ashton on the sidelines of the AEMM-19 Conference in Brunei (April 2012); Foreign Minister Pham Binh Minh visited the EU and officially signed the Vietnam-EU PCA Agreement (June 2012).
On the EU side, EC President José Manuel Barroso paid an official visit to Vietnam in November 2007. This was the first official visit by an EC President since the two sides established diplomatic relations. EC Trade Commissioner Karel de Gucht paid a working visit to Vietnam in February 2010; a delegation of EP parliamentarians visited Vietnam in March 2010. The Executive Director General of the EU External Action Service visited Vietnam and held the first political consultation at the Deputy Foreign Minister level with Vietnam in February 2012...
In economic cooperation, the EU is currently one of Vietnam's leading trade partners with two-way trade increasing by an average of 15-20% per year. In terms of investment, most EU member countries and large corporations have invested in Vietnam. Trade is an important pillar in Vietnam-EU relations. The EU is currently one of Vietnam's largest trade partners.
Within 11 years, from 2000 to 2011, Vietnam-EU trade turnover increased 5.9 times, from 4.1 billion USD in 2000 to 24.29 billion USD in 2011 (an increase of nearly 37% compared to 2010), of which Vietnam's exports to the EU reached 16.55 billion USD, an increase of 45%, Vietnam's imports from the EU reached 7.75 billion USD, an increase of nearly 22% compared to 2010. Two-way trade in the first 8 months of 2012 reached over 18 billion USD, an increase of 23% compared to the same period last year, of which Vietnam's exports to the EU reached 12.69 billion USD, Vietnam's imports from the EU reached 5.75 billion USD.
The EU is Vietnam's second largest export market after the United States and is a major market for a number of Vietnam's key export products such as footwear, garments, seafood, wooden furniture, electronics, and consumer goods. Vietnam's main export products to the EU in 2011 were still traditional products such as leather shoes, textiles, green coffee beans, wooden furniture, and seafood, accounting for nearly 80% of Vietnam's total export turnover to the European market. Vietnam's main import products from the EU were still machinery, equipment, spare parts, means of transport, pharmaceuticals, fabrics of all kinds, fertilizers, etc.
The outstanding feature of Vietnam-EU two-way trade is high complementarity and low competition. Vietnam has continuously had a trade surplus with the EU, especially in the last 10 years with an average trade surplus of 3-5 billion USD, equivalent to 50% of export turnover. The structure of Vietnam's exports to the EU has shifted towards increasing the proportion of high-quality goods, clean food, handicrafts, and reducing the proportion of medium-quality goods and raw agricultural products.
In October 2010, Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung and EC President Barroso announced the launch of bilateral FTA negotiations after completing technical issues. After launching negotiations, in October 2012, the two sides conducted the first round of FTA negotiations in Hanoi.
EU member states are currently among the leading investors in Vietnam. As of the end of August 2012, 20 out of 27 EU states had invested in Vietnam with 1,226 valid projects, with a total registered capital of approximately 4.75 billion USD.
Regarding investment by Vietnamese enterprises in the EU, by the end of August 2012, Vietnam had 33 investment projects in 10 EU countries with a total registered capital of about 107 million USD. In general, the investment scale is still small (on average, 1 project is about 1 million USD), but these are the initial steps for Vietnamese enterprises to penetrate the EU market.
Currently, the EU is the second largest bilateral donor of ODA and the largest provider of non-refundable aid to Vietnam with a total committed ODA in the period 1996-2012 of more than 13 billion USD, actively contributing to Vietnam's socio-economic development.
The EC and EU member countries also cooperate closely with Vietnam in many specialized fields in priority areas of Vietnam and the EU with strengths such as: institutional support, science and technology, education, law, health, finance and banking, agriculture, culture, tourism...
President of the European Council Herman Van Rompuy visited Vietnam to demonstrate his appreciation for Vietnam's growing role and position in the dynamically developing region; affirm his desire to strengthen multifaceted cooperation with Vietnam; learn about Vietnam's socio-economic development, successful path of innovation and international integration; discuss measures to enhance bilateral cooperation within the broader framework of the PCA; discuss international and regional issues of mutual concern; inform the EU of measures to cope with the Eurozone crisis and discuss measures to enhance bilateral relations at regional and international multilateral forums./.
According to (TTXVN)-LT
