At the seminar "One year of implementing the EVFTA: Opportunities, challenges and solutions" jointly held by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Industry and Trade in the form of face-to-face and online meetings, Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Dang Hoang Giang said: The implementation of the EVFTA since August 2020 has created a new momentum for Vietnam - EU relations, opening up vast cooperation opportunities, contributing to promoting trade activities and investment connections for the business community and people. After more than a year of implementation, the EVFTA has brought many positive results. In the first 9 months of 2021, the total two-way turnover between Vietnam and the EU reached 41.29 billion USD, up 13.4% over the same period in 2020. Of which, exports reached 28.85 billion USD, up 11.7%. This is a very meaningful result in the context of the Covid-19 outbreak negatively affecting economic and trade activities of countries.   

Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Dang Hoang Giang delivered the opening speech at the seminar "One year of implementing the EVFTA: Opportunities, challenges and solutions" 

To continue to remove difficulties and effectively utilize the Agreement, Deputy Minister Dang Hoang Giang suggested that representatives of ministries, branches, associations, enterprises and Vietnamese representative agencies in the EU jointly assess the actual implementation of the Agreement, clarify difficulties, and thereby propose solutions to continue to perfect the legal framework, improve labor and environmental standards, combat illegal fishing, as well as strengthen connections between ministries, branches, representative agencies with associations and enterprises. The Deputy Minister affirmed that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Vietnamese diplomatic representative agencies in the European Union (EU) will continue to participate, contribute and accompany agencies and enterprises in effectively implementing the EVFTA and implementing the country's integration strategy in the new period.

Deputy Minister of Industry and Trade Tran Quoc Khanh assessed the positive results after one year of implementing EVFTA

Also at the seminar, Deputy Minister of Industry and Trade Tran Quoc Khanh noted that after 1 year of implementing EVFTA, Vietnam's export turnover to the EU market using the certificate of origin for the EU market reached a fairly high rate, at nearly 8 billion USD, showing that many businesses have paid attention and made good use of tariff reduction incentives and the implementation of this agreement has met expectations on trade turnover.

According to the assessment of the Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and Industry, compared to other Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) that have come into effect, the level of understanding and expectations of enterprises for the EVFTA is relatively high (30.19% of surveyed enterprises understand and grasp information about the commitments in the EVFTA compared to the average of 22.95% in other FTAs). The EVFTA is one of Vietnam's Free Trade Agreements with the best utilization rate in the first year of implementation. 

Overview of the Conference and Discussion at the Hanoi bridgehead

According to Mr. Luong Hoang Thai, Director of the Multilateral Trade Policy Department (Ministry of Industry and Trade), agricultural products, textiles, and seafood are the industries that have taken advantage of the opportunities from the EVFTA. In addition to the opportunity to expand and diversify markets, EVFTA also brings Vietnam the opportunity to reform institutions, increase transparency, improve the investment and business environment, and transform the structure of goods towards exporting high value-added products.

However, Vietnamese ambassadors and trade counselors in the EU noted the fact that the EU's demand for goods and Vietnam's ability to meet it are not many, and the competitiveness and level of deep participation in the value chain of enterprises are still limited...

Business representatives requested that management agencies continue to improve mechanisms and policies to support businesses in improving their capacity, accessing information and preferential policies, and innovating production methods towards sustainability. Businesses also hope that representative agencies will increase the provision of market information, have plans to coordinate in promoting the national brand image, and promote trade promotion activities in a synchronous manner in Europe./.