Brussels, 16/04/2008 (Agence Europe) -The Vietnamese minister for trade and industry, Vu Huy Hoang, visited Brussels on 10 April to try to convince the European Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson to give up on plans to exclude exports of sporting equipment from Vietnam from the generalised system of preferences of the EU (GSP) in 2009-2011. At the same time, the European sports equipment industry has rallied to defend Vietnam's preferential access to the Community market and to protect the activity of its major brands based in the country. Meeting under the banner of the Federation of European Sporting Goods Industry (FESI), companies such as Adidas, Nike and Puma called upon the Commission to reconsider its plans. Both the Vietnamese government and FESI fear that excluding Vietnamese imports of sporting equipment from the GSP would have devastating consequences for the development of the country, 60% of exports from which are in this sector. In order to take account of the high degree of dependency of certain developing countries on a single category of product (the threshold is set at 50% minimum of the total value of exports covered by the GSP made by the country), the GSP guarantees preferential access to the Community market for this category of product. In the case of Vietnam, the Commission takes the view that, according to a detailed evaluation carried out by its services, exports of sporting equipment now represent less than 50% of the total value of its exports covered by the GSP. It therefore contends that its exports are competitive on the world market and that it no longer requires the protection of the GSP. These figures and this conclusion have been challenged by the Vietnamese government, which blames Community anti-dumping measures imposed on exports of leather sports shoes since 2005. Hanoi believes that these measures are behind the fall in the share of sports equipment in the total value of Vietnamese exports covered by the GSP. The dossier, which was examined by the Council on 11 April, will be re-examined prior to a final decision this summer. (E.H.)