Brussels, 27/11/2015 (Agence Europe) - On Friday 27 November, European Commissioner for Trade said that during the visit of the prime minister of Vietnam Nguyen Tan Dung to Brussels on Wednesday 2 December, he and the president of the European Commission Jean-Claude Juncker will announce the definitive conclusion of negotiations for an EU-Vietnam free trade agreement.
“Let's hope the negotiation texts will be published by Christmas. We will then move on to the process of translating them into the 22 language of the EU and to legal scrubbing - which will probably take all of next year before the text comes back to the Council and European Parliament for ratification”, Malmström told press at the end of the meeting of European trade ministers.
In early August, the EU and Vietnam made an agreement in principle to conclude their talks for a free trade agreement (a free trade agreement that was launched in 2012 - see EUROPE 11372). This agreement, the first of the kind concluded by the EU with a developing country, covers trade in goods and services, investment, public procurement, intellectual property (including geographical indications), non tariff barriers to trade, sanitary and phytosanitary measures, technical barriers to trade, customs cooperation and trade facilitation, and it also includes a chapter on sustainable development.
An EU source told EUROPE on Friday that the concluded agreement includes a chapter on investment protection based on the reformed approach to investment protection and a new more transparent system for settling disputes between investors and states - an approach proposed by the Commission at the start of the autumn (see EUROPE 11429). (Original version in French by Emmanuel Hagry)