Strengthening Vietnam-EU and ASEAN-EU relations was one of the main topics discussed during an international conference that opened in Hanoi on December 9.
The 3 rd Hanoi conference on ASEAN-EU relations, themed “Community Building, Bilateral/Biregional Relations and Economic Diplomacy”, has drawn the participation of nearly 70 delegates from EU member countries and ASEAN nations, including Belgium, Hungary, Spain, Laos, Myanmar, Singapore, the Philippines and Vietnam.
Speaking at the conference, Bertrand de Crombrugghe, ASEM Senior Official for Belgium, said that ASEAN and the EU see great prospects for bilateral cooperation while emphasising ASEAN’s important role for the development of the EU.
The EU will assist ASEAN in building institutions and policies and have specific programmes to foster bilateral relations, especially in migration management, intellectual property, transport, human trafficking, climate change and energy, he said.
The EU representative said the two regions should further strengthen cooperation in building communities, including the political/security, economic and socio-cultural communities.
At present, EU is one of ASEAN’s leading partners, with two-way trade reaching 118 billion EUR in 2009.
However, Bertrand said that the ASEAN-EU relationship is yet to match the two regions’ potentials, particularly in trade as the EU has not reached an agreement on free trade area (FTA) with ASEAN. The EU has only signed the Partnership and Cooperation Agreement (PCA) with several Southeast Asian nations, including Vietnam and Indonesia .
He affirmed the EU’s wish to get involved in the Southeast Asian region’s security issues because the EU is not only a socio-cultural institution but also a security one.
Regarding the Vietnam-EU relationship, Nguyen Thiep from the European Department under the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that Vietnam and the EU have obtained significant achievements in their cooperation since diplomatic ties were established 20 years ago.
The EU is now one of Vietnam’s largest donors, investors and trade partners. The two sides concluded their negotiations on the PCA in October this year and are preparing for their discussions on the FTA.
The third Hanoi conference on ASEAN-EU relations is jointly held by the Diplomatic Academy of Vietnam, the Wallonia-Brussels and EU delegations to Vietnam. During the two days of sitting, the conference focused on discussing the building of communities within ASEAN and economic diplomacy in the 21 st century, as well as experiences from the Vietnamese chairmanship of ASEAN and the Belgian presidency of the EU in 2010./.
