To Lam, the General Secretary and President of Vietnam, traveled to Brussels on Wednesday to strengthen relations with the European Union and Belgium. This visit comes as Vietnam has recently signed a free trade agreement with the European Free Trade Association (EFTA).
Development of Trade Relations
Trade relations between Vietnam and Europe have expanded significantly in recent years. The Vietnam-European Union Free Trade Agreement (EVFTA), which came into effect in August 2020, has dramatically increased Vietnam's trade connections with most European countries.
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Amid global tariff wars, Vietnam-EU relations are seen as a positive promotion for maintaining free markets. Vietnam offers Europe a stable manufacturing base and another base in Asian supply chains, while Europe provides Vietnam with capital, technology, and a large market.
Challenges and Concerns
However, these relations come with challenges. There are many questions about whether European companies are benefiting sufficiently from Vietnam's economic boom and whether Brussels is paying attention to the human rights recession in Vietnam. Vietnam is a one-party communist state that severely restricts political dissent, independent journalism, and civil society.
Twelve international human rights organizations expressed serious concerns in a letter to the President of the European Commission and the President of the European Council regarding the intensification of crackdowns by the Vietnamese government and called for real reforms.
In the negotiations related to the EVFTA, Vietnam committed to human rights obligations, labor protections, and environmental standards, but some human rights groups say that Vietnam has not fulfilled these commitments.
Despite the agreements signed, Vietnam has yet to ratify the convention on freedom of association, and independent labor unions remain banned.
The next challenge concerns which Vietnamese companies have benefited most from the EU's trade liberalization. Large foreign manufacturers and established exporters have been better able to take advantage of tariff reductions than small domestic businesses.
While the EVFTA has significantly boosted bilateral trade, the agreement has primarily helped increase Vietnam's exports to Europe rather than European sales to Vietnam. The EU's trade deficit with Vietnam reached 51.7 billion euros in 2025.
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