
Bucharest (VNA) – Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh had a meeting with RomanianPresident of the Chamber of Deputies Alfred Simonis on January 22 (local time)as part of his official visit to the European country.
AffirmingVietnam’s foreign policy of independence, self-reliance, multilateralism anddiversification of relations, PM Chinh underscored that Vietnam always valuesand wants to enhance relations with its traditional partners in Central andEastern Europe, with Romania being the one with a top priority.
AlfredSimonis, for his part, described the Vietnamese Government leader’s visit as animportant milestone in the sound traditional friendship and cooperation betweenthe two countries.
He spoke highly of the socio-economic achievements that Vietnam has carved outover the past time as well as the country’s increasing role and position in theinternational arena. He also affirmed that Romania always treasures and hopesto bolster the ties with Vietnam – its traditional friendship partner in theSoutheast Asian region.
Atthe event, both sides expressed their delight at the positive development inthe bilateral ties across various areas. As the relations hold huge potentialfor further development, the two leaders agreed to enhance the exchange ofdelegations at all levels via Party, State and parliament channels so as topromote political trust and reach consensus on measures to strengthen thebilateral ties.
TheRomanian President of Chamber of Deputies hailed the fruitfulinter-parliamentary between the two parliaments with regular exchange ofdelegations between leaders of parliaments, parliaments’ committees and friendshipparliamentarians.
Meanwhile, PM Chinh asserted that Vietnam wants to cooperate and share experiencein the fields of legislation and supreme supervision, while recommending the twoparliaments support and promote the implementation of the cooperation deals reachedbetween the two governments, particularly those in economy, trade and investment.
TheVietnamese Government leader took the occasion to thank the Romanian parliament forassisting the negotiations and signing of the EU-Vietnam Free Trade Agreement(EVFTA) and becoming one of the first in the EU adopting the EU-VietnamInvestment Protection Agreement (EVIPA).
He suggested the Romanian Chamber of Deputies continue hastening theparliaments of other EU nations to ratify the EVIPA soon, and back the European Commission to lift the illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) "yellow card" on Vietnamese seafood.
Simonis agreed that both sides need to promote the efficiency of theinter-governmental mechanism on economic cooperation, continue rolling out theEVFTA.
Highlightingthe robust cooperation in education-training, agriculture, culture-tourism, andlabour, the two leaders concurred to boost collaboration in those traditionalareas and expand to other potential ones such as IT, green finance andinnovation so as to branch out the friendship in all fields.

Thiswas the last activity of PM Chinh during his working trip to Europe to attendthe 54th Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum (WEF-54) in Davos,Switzerland and official visits to Hungary and Romania.
PM Chinh, his spouse and a high-ranking Vietnamese delegation then left Bucharest for Hanoi./.