The EU and Vietnam have agreed to strengthen the disciplines of the WTO Agreement on Technical Barriers to Trade (OTC). In particular, Vietnam is committed to strengthening the enforcement of international standards in the development of its regulations. The agreement also contains a chapter on health and plant health measures (SPS), which specifically aims to facilitate trade in plant and animal products, in which the parties have agreed on a number of important principles such as regionalisation and the recognition of the EU as a single unit. These provisions will facilitate access to the Vietnamese market by EU companies that manufacture a large number of products, including electrical appliances, information technology and food and beverage products. The Vietnamese government should also continue on the path of reforms – strengthening the banking sector, eliminating corruption, fine-tuning legal and fiscal structures and improving trade facilities. Overall, ASEAN is the EU`s third largest trading partner outside Europe, after the United States and China. Ensuring better access for EU exporters to the dynamic ASEAN market is an EU priority. Negotiations for a trade and investment agreement between the region and ASEAN began in 2007 and were interrupted by mutual agreement in 2009 to relax a bilateral negotiating format. These bilateral trade and investment agreements were designed as building blocks for a future agreement between the regions. Singapore`s history could be an example from which Vietnam can learn. In 2018, however, Harvard University economist Dani Rodrik said in the Journal of Economic Perspective that if these free trade agreements increase the volume of trade, the distribution of these benefits is another matter: “A trade agreement that is covered by another set of special interests can make things worse as easily as it makes them better.” He also wrote that “such an agreement can distract us from the effective outcome, even if it uses the cover of a free trade agreement and increases the volume of trade and investment. Rodrik stressed that the effects of free trade agreements are fundamentally uncertain and that protectionism is depending on them.
List of agreements being negotiated. Agreements that have so far been discussed only in the absence of formal action by the parties concerned are not mentioned. Once such trade agreements are in place, Vietnam will benefit from the benefits of reduced tariffs both within the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) and with the EU and the United States to attract exporting companies to products in Vietnam and export them to non-ASEAN partners. On 8 June, the Vietnamese National Assembly approved the agreements by an overwhelming majority, with 457 deputies for the free trade agreement and 462 for the IAP. According to some Vietnamese newspapers, the agreements could come into force in July.
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