EU shows strong WTO-related support to Vietnam
HANOI - The leaders of the European Union (EU) have strongly supported Vietnam's accession to the World Trade Organization next year, and been willing to widen EU's import doors to Vietnam's textiles. During the Vietnam-EU Leaders Meeting held here on Thursday night, They agreed to accelerate the bilateral negotiations with the expectation to reach a positive completion on the occasion of the 5th Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM 5), according to an EU's press release here.
"The EU is willing to further open its market access to Vietnam's textiles in the context of the 'Early Harvest' deal before Vietnam's accession to WTO," said the press release. The leaders of EU and Vietnam highly appreciated the good progress in their political, economic, trade and investment ties as well as those in the fields of science, technology, human resource development and capacity building. They stated that there are great opportunities to beef up their relations. The European Commission and the Vietnamese government inked a memorandum of understanding on the national indicative program forthe 2005-2006 period, and two financing agreements on the private sector support program and the multilateral trade policy assistance program which total nearly 59 million US dollars.
Besides economic concerns, the EU leaders laid emphasis on principles written in the EC-Vietnam Cooperation Agreement, including dialogues on issues of human rights and democracy in thespirit of mutual respect and understanding. The EU took note of Vietnam's proposal to set up a regular mechanism of political consultation at the level of foreign ministers.
Vietnam, for its part, reaffirmed commitments to create more favorable conditions for EU investors and traders to do business with the country. The 5th EU-Vietnam Joint Commission, to take place here next year, will put forth concrete measures to deepen the relations between the two sides. The two-way trade between the EU and Vietnam in 2003 stood at about 8 billion US dollars, of which nearly 5.5 billion US dollars came from Vietnamese exports. The EU is one of leading suppliers of non-refundable aid to Vietnam.
The EU-Vietnam Leaders Meeting was attended by Vietnamese PrimeMinister Phan Van Khai, Luxemburg Prime Minister Jean-Claude Junker, Dutch Foreign Minister Bernard Rudolf Bot and the EuropeanCommission President Romano Prodi.
Xinhuanet - October 8, 2004
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