A framework agreement was inked in Hanoi on April 18 to mark a newpage in the presence of Germany’s Friedrich Elbert Stiftung (FES) inVietnam.
President of the Vietnam Unions ofFriendship Associations (VUFO) Vu Xuan Hong and FES Representative inVietnam Erwin Schweisshelm signed the document.
Asone of the first foreign organisations to open a representative officein Vietnam, FES representative office made debut on October 4, 1990in accordance to a Memorandum of Understanding signed with theVietnamese government. Over the past years, FES has positively takenpart in supporting Vietnam’s renewal cause and administrationreforms as well as its door-opening policies. It has also helped improvecapacity for Vietnamese public servants.
FES hasbuilt strong ties with various agencies of Vietnam and served as abridge linking Nordrhein-Westfalen state of Germany with the Ministry ofJustice and the Central Institute for Economic Management Study, aswell as the Hamburg state and Bac Giang province.
FES is the first foreign non-governmental organisation to sign suchagreement with Vietnam under the government’s new decree on theregistration and operation of foreign NGOs in Vietnam, which wasadopted in 2012.-VNA