Opportunities for Vietnamese agricultural products to enter Europe after EVFTA comes into effect

Currently, the European Union - EU market is the 4th largest fruit and vegetable export market of Vietnam and afterEVFTA Agreementofficially takes effect, the development potential of this market is even more open. For a long time, Vietnamese agricultural products have had a good reputation in the European market because we have many diverse tropical fruits, many key products with high quality and productivity such as rice and coffee.

Currently in Europe, rice andpassion fruitare two very welcome products. For example, in France, rice is imported a lot through the Asian supermarket system in Paris, while passion fruit and other fruits are imported through the Rungis wholesale market, the largest wholesale market in Europe. In addition, frozen seafood products from Vietnam are also quite present in supermarkets and each year Vietnam exports more than 1.1 billion euros to this market.

Opportunities for Vietnamese agricultural products to enter Europe after EVFTA comes into effect.

In general, Vietnamese agricultural products are highly appreciated for their diversity and novelty. However, we still have to overcome many barriers in terms of taste as well as consumption channels. Hopefully, after the EVFTA Agreement comes into effect, with a tax rate of 0% for many products, more Vietnamese agricultural products will be able to enter Europe.

The European market is known as one of the markets with the most stringent standards, especially in product quality and production processes. Therefore, the productsVietnamese agricultural productsAll must meet requirements such as having food safety certification, having environmentally friendly production processes, respecting sustainable development, as well as ensuring workers' rights. These have all been mentioned in the EVFTA Agreement and are considered great progress.

Before exporting to Europe, Vietnamese products have been thoroughly checked for requirements, so there are almost no, or very few, returned products. However, the EU is extremely concerned about the environmental aspect as this continent is ambitious to become a green continent by 2050 and recently the European Commission has banned a series of pesticides. Therefore, for agricultural products, Vietnamese enterprises must pay special attention to the use of pesticides during processing, exploitation, as well as in the production process because it is very easy to be inspected and evaluated by the European Commission, the yellow card for seafood is an example.

Dien Chau farmers process peanuts for export. Photo: Viet Phuong

European consumer tastes are also very different from Asia, this is one of the points that Vietnamese businesses need to pay attention to. For example, lychee. A few years ago, Vietnam successfully exported lychee to France, but in reality, large French supermarket chains such as Carrefour, Auchan, etc. mainly sell lychees from Madagascar or some African countries. This type of lychee is small, has a dry skin, and very little water, but has the advantage of being sold most of the year, while Vietnamese lychee is mainly sold in the summer, when the fruit market in Europe is extremely diverse.

Therefore, perhaps Vietnam should also consider promoting the sale of dried fabric products.

Another example is mangoes. European consumers prefer firm and moderately sweet mangoes from Ivory Coast or Peru, while most Vietnamese mangoes are soft and sweet. The biggest problem is that Vietnamese agricultural products must developdistribution channeleffective because in supermarkets in France, there are many other agricultural products and fruits such as lemons, grapefruits, onions, garlic, etc. from other countries that are no different in appearance and quality compared to Vietnamese agricultural products./.