Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Pham Binh Minh (R) receives President of Ile-de-France region Valérie Pécresse in Hanoi on July 16 (Photo: VNA) Hanoi (VNA) – Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Pham Binh Minh received President of Ile-de-France region Valérie Pécresse in Hanoi on July 16.
The Ile-de-France delegation has been on a visit to the capital city of Hanoi to attend the celebration of 30 years of cooperative ties between the two localities.
At the meeting, Minh noted with satisfaction that the Vietnam-France strategic partnership is growing well in all spheres. Notably, the two countries have regularly exchanged high-ranking delegations, including a visit to France by Party General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong in March 2018 and a trip to Vietnam by French Prime Minister Édouard Philippe in November the same year.
The Deputy PM highly valued the development of economic ties between the two countries with bilateral trade topping 5 billion EUR each year.
He added locality-to-locality cooperation and people-to-people exchange have helped intensify the strategic partnership, matching the interests and demand of both nations. Particularly, Ile-de-France was the first French locality to set up a partnership with Hanoi, laying the foundation for developing cooperation between the two countries’ localities, Minh said.
The official also applauded Hanoi and Ile-de-France’s signing of a memorandum of understanding on the establishment of a startup incubator named Hanoi French City Lab to support Vietnamese and French startups in urban development, environment, smart city building and sustainable development, which are also the fields of France’s strength and Hanoi’s demand.
Minh asked Pécresse to help accelerate the European Union (EU) and French parliaments' ratification of the free trade agreement and the investment protection agreement that Vietnam and the EU signed in late June so as to soon bring about practical benefits to both sides.
For her part, Pécresse said the cooperation between Hanoi and Ile-de-France is a model for Vietnamese and French localities to follow.
During their stay in Hanoi, the French delegation took part in the opening ceremony of an air quality monitoring station at the French Embassy, a workshop on cities and innovation, and the signing ceremony of cooperation documents between the two localities.-VNA
VNA
