EU Backs Vietnam’s WTO Accession

3:26:17 PM | 7/8/2005

Recently a six-member delegation from the European Commission (EC) led by Raffaele Mauro Petriccione, director of the Directorate-General for Trade of the European Commission, arrived in Hanoi to begin three-day bilateral talks (July 6-9) on agriculture, tariffs and services (including financial services).

The talks took place in a cooperative spirit and made great progress. Vietnam attaches importance to a long-term partnership with the EU and in turn, the EU has highly appreciated the great economic potential of the Vietnamese market. The two sides agreed that Vietnam-EU bilateral talks had entered the final phase and more talks would be held on the opening of the Vietnamese goods and service market.

Agriculture in Vietnam accounts for a high proportion of GDP with the majority of its population engaged in agriculture. Therefore, the EU welcomes and supports Vietnam's position to apply tariff rate quotas on some commodities, as well as the transitional period of three years, from the date of WTO accession, to remove its agricultural export subsidies. The EU has also paid attention to the interests of EU investors in Vietnam, and is pleased to note that Vietnam has promised to implement the WTO's Agreement on Trade-Related Investment Measures (TRIMs) and the Agreement on Trade-Related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPs) upon its WTO accession. The EU will provide further technical assistance to help Vietnam implement the Agreement on the Application of Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures (SPS).

Despite having provided Vietnam with assistance to help it accelerate its WTO accession, Petriccione said he thought that it would be difficult for Vietnam to achieve its target of being a WTO member on January 1, 2005 as scheduled. Although 63 negotiating partners of Vietnam said that they highly appreciated Vietnam's market access offers for goods and services, and its programme for applying WTO agreements, it is impossible for the Vietnam WTO accession working group to complete its report before the December conference. However, he said he believed that Vietnam may become a WTO member in late 2005 and the EU would help Vietnam to achieve its goal.
In response to the attention and support from EU exporters and investors, Vietnam promised to strive to create better market and investment opportunities for the EU within the WTO framework.
It is hoped that with the accession to the WTO, the cooperative ties between the two sides will develop in a sustainable manner.