PM Pham Minh Chinh meets with Romanian President of Chamber of Deputies: Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh (L) meets with Romanian President of the Chamber of Deputies Alfred Simonis. (Photo: VNA)

Affirming Vietnam’s foreign policy of independence, self-reliance, multilateralism and diversification of relations, PM Chinh underscored that Vietnam always values and wants to enhance relations with its traditional partners in Central and Eastern Europe, with Romania being the one with a top priority.

Alfred Simonis, for his part, described the Vietnamese Government leader’s visit as an important milestone in the sound traditional friendship and cooperation between the two countries.

He spoke highly of the socio-economic achievements that Vietnam has carved out over the past time as well as the country’s increasing role and position in the international arena. He also affirmed that Romania always treasures and hopes to bolster the ties with Vietnam – its traditional friendship partner in the Southeast Asian region.

At the event, both sides expressed their delight at the positive development in the bilateral ties across various areas. As the relations hold huge potential for further development, the two leaders agreed to enhance the exchange of delegations at all levels via Party, State and parliament channels so as to promote political trust and reach consensus on measures to strengthen the bilateral ties.

The Romanian President of Chamber of Deputies hailed the fruitful inter-parliamentary between the two parliaments with regular exchange of delegations between leaders of parliaments, parliaments’ committees and friendship parliamentarians.

Meanwhile, Prime Minister Chinh asserted that Vietnam wants to cooperate and share experience in the fields of legislation and supreme supervision, while recommending the two parliaments support and promote the implementation of the cooperation deals reached between the two governments, particularly those in economy, trade and investment.

The Vietnamese Government leader took the occasion to thank the Romanian parliament for assisting the negotiations and signing of the EU-Vietnam Free Trade Agreement (EVFTA) and becoming one of the first in the EU adopting the EU-Vietnam Investment Protection Agreement (EVIPA).

He suggested the Romanian Chamber of Deputies continue hastening the parliaments 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 the inter-governmental mechanism on economic cooperation, continue rolling out the EVFTA.

Highlighting the robust cooperation in education-training, agriculture, culture-tourism, and labour, the two leaders concurred to boost collaboration in those traditional areas and expand to other potential ones such as IT, green finance and innovation so as to branch out the friendship in all fields.

This was the last activity of Prime Minister Chinh during his working trip to Europe to attend the 54th Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum (WEF-54) in Davos, Switzerland and official visits to Hungary and Romania.

Prime Minister Chinh, Spouse and a high-ranking Vietnamese delegation then left Bucharest for Hanoi.