ASEAN leaders pose for a group photo at the opening ceremony of the 42nd ASEAN Summit

The Summit conveyed many important messages. During the event, ASEAN leaders had meetings and dialogues with the ASEAN Inter-Parliamentary Assembly, the ASEAN Youth Organization, the ASEAN Business Advisory Council and the High-Level Task Force on ASEAN Community Post-2025 Vision.

First, the spirit of solidarity, independence, self-reliance and strategic self-reliance is clearly illustrated in the statements of member countries. The leaders agreed that this is the strength, the driving force and the motto for ASEAN to maintain its position, role and image in the region and in the world. ASEAN will be a central force in the process of consolidating peace, maintaining stability and cooperation in Southeast Asia and the wider Asia-Indo-Pacific region.

Second, ASEAN's ability to become the epicentrum of growth is also highly appreciated. The global economy is unstable; the geopolitical setting is volatile; challenges and difficulties are piling up, but ASEAN still grows at a high pace, up to 5.5% in the past year, becoming the world's 5th largest economy. However, countries still believe that they cannot be overconfident, but they need to foster cooperation in various new and strategic fields such as trade, intra-regional investment, digital transformation, sustainable development, green transformation and renewable energy.

Third, the interests of the people are considered the highest goal and the focus of the ASEAN Community. Discussion contents and documents of this Summit revolved around the interests of the people toward equitable, sustainable and inclusive development. This is clearly seen in statements by the leaders, all of which are very practical and community-oriented such as migrant workers, village network and rural development.

During the Summit, the Leaders also engaged in dialogues with representatives of the ASEAN Inter-Parliamentary Assembly, the ASEAN Youth, the ASEAN Business Advisory Council and the High-Level Task Force on ASEAN Community Post-2025 Vision. Their statements are very focused, showing their resolve to join hands for a truly people-oriented and people-centered community.

At the Summit, Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh and the Vietnamese delegation delivered many important messages: The spirit of ASEAN solidarity, the determination to make substantive and effective contributions to the construction of the ASEAN Community and affirmed the consistent line and unified policy of the Party and the State of Vietnam that regard ASEAN as an important and integral part of foreign policy.

In that spirit, Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh's remarks were aimed at generating ideas, arousing self-reliance, and unleashing resources for the development of the ASEAN Community. He put forth many proposals to the meetings he attended.

He emphasized that solidarity, unity, independence, resilience self-reliance and centrality are the fundamental values that make ASEAN successful. He stated that solidarity is an invincible strength, which must be demonstrated through definite will and actions. Reinforcing solidarity and unity is the core task for an independent and resilient ASEAN.

Prime Minister Chinh also emphasized that ASEAN needs to maintain a strategic balance in relationships with its partners, especially big countries. Holding a strategic balance will keep ASEAN's centrality on the path to a strong ASEAN.

ASEAN must really be a reliable bridge, capable of harmonizing relations with major countries; must build and promote the culture of dialogue, cooperation, consultation and building trust; and coordinate in response to shared challenges.

Besides, ASEAN must promote regional connectivity in all three aspects of institutions, infrastructure and people to clear cooperation bottlenecks and arouse development potential. The Prime Minister emphasized that these are three strategic breakthroughs to create a stronger development engine for ASEAN in the coming decades.

Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh addresses the 42nd ASEAN Summit Plenary Session

Amid an uncertain and risk-prone global economy, in order to boost recovery and sustainable development, the Prime Minister underlined the expansion of the intra-regional market and proposed efforts to negotiate and upgrade the ASEAN Trade in Goods Agreement and consistently and drastically carry out regional connectivity projects to make qualitative changes for the investment, business and tourism environment.

He suggested paying attention to fostering cooperation in the digital economy, digital government, and circular economy while connecting the power grid, developing renewable energy, and soon developing long-term strategies on high-quality human resource training by improving the effective enforcement of the Mutual Recognition Arrangements in some ASEAN industries.

Sticking to ASEAN's core spirit of taking people as the heart, the goal and the driving force of ASEAN Community construction, Prime Minister Chinh stressed that ASEAN should pay attention to making more effort to narrow the development gap, especially in far-lying, remote and sub-regional areas. Sub-regional cooperation should be linked to common cooperation programs of the ASEAN Community in all fields in order to open up a larger development space and ensure a better life for all people.

At the Summit, Prime Minister Chinh and ASEAN Leaders had extensive exchanges on regional and international issues, reaffirming ASEAN's principled stance. He stressed that protecting peace, stability, security, safety, freedom of navigation and overflight in the East Sea is both the interest and responsibility of all countries, proposed fully and effectively enforcing the DOC Declaration and striving to achieve a substantive, effective the Code of Conduct (COC) in accordance with international laws and UNCLOS 1982.

His proposals and contributions were highly appreciated by the delegates.

On this occasion, Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh met and interacted with leaders of ASEAN countries to review the implementation of agreements, discuss measures to strengthen relationships, and open up new opportunities for economic cooperation, trade, investment, security-defense, culture-education, people-to-people exchanges between Vietnam and ASEAN countries more deeply, effectively and substantively.