Vietnam is Austria’s largest partner in Southeast Asia

On July 24, right after the official welcome ceremony, President Vo Van Thuong and President Alexander Van der Bellen had a narrow meeting and then co-chaired a meeting between high-level delegations of the two countries.

Here, President Alexander Van der Bellen warmly welcomed President Vo Van Thuong’s official visit to the Republic of Austria, showing the importance of the Party, State of Vietnam and President Vo Van Thuong personally to the relationship between the two countries.

State President Vo Van Thuong and his wife and Austrian President Alexander Van der Bellen and his wife had a meeting right at the office of the President of Austria. Photo: TG&VN.

Congratulating Vietnam on its great achievements in socio-economic development over the past time, President Alexander Van der Bellen affirmed that Austria attaches great importance to the traditional friendship and multifaceted cooperation with Vietnam established in 1972, considering Vietnam an important partner in implementing Austria’s foreign policy in the Asia-Pacific region, especially in trade, education, and cultural relations.

State President Vo Van Thuong thanked President Alexander Van der Bellen and the people of Austria for the respectful, thoughtful and warm welcome, affirming that Vietnam always attaches importance to and wishes to strengthen the friendship and multifaceted cooperation with Austria, a trusted friend of Vietnam in the EU.

The President believes that the visit will contribute to strengthening political trust between the two countries, creating a new impetus to strongly promote the Vietnam-Austria relations in the next period, for the benefit of the two peoples, for peace, cooperation and development in the region and the world.

Talking about bilateral relations, President Vo Van Thuong and President Alexander Van der Bellen expressed their satisfaction about the substantive and effective development after more than half a century of traditional friendship and multifaceted cooperation between the two countries in many fields such as politics – diplomacy, trade – investment, development cooperation, culture, education – training, vocational training, science – technology, and science – technology exchange.

In order to increase political trust and exploit the great cooperation potentials of the two countries, the two Heads of State agreed to strengthen the exchange of delegations at all levels, especially at high level and across channels, effectively deploy existing cooperation mechanisms, and study and establish new cooperation mechanisms suitable to the new situation.

Regarding economic cooperation, the two leaders positively assessed the economic – trade – investment relations of the two countries with bilateral trade turnover reaching 2.79 billion USD in 2022, Austria has many large enterprises doing business and investing in Vietnam.

President Vo Van Thuong suggested that the two sides continue to closely coordinate and effectively take advantage of the benefits of the Vietnam – EU Free Trade Agreement (EVFTA); including the consideration of creating favorable conditions for each country’s strong export products to access each other’s markets; Austria has policies to encourage and create favorable conditions for Austrian businesses to promote investment in Vietnam in strong fields such as supporting industries for automobile production, railways, medical equipment, and pharmaceuticals.

The Austrian President emphasized that Vietnam is Austria’s largest partner in Southeast Asia, hoping that both sides pay attention to improving the bilateral trade balance. State President Vo Van Thuong also suggested Austria soon complete the procedures for ratifying the Vietnam – EU Investment Protection Agreement (EVIPA) to facilitate equal and mutually beneficial investment relations between the two sides; requested Austria to support and promote the European Commission (EC) to soon remove the IUU yellow card for Vietnam’s seafood, creating favorable conditions for Vietnam to export this item to the EU.

The President asked Austria to put Vietnam on the priority list to receive ODA and have more preferential lending policies, especially for projects in the fields of health, environment, vocational training, fire prevention and rescue and rescue. The Austrian President welcomed the fact that the two sides are discussing preferential loans from the Austrian Government, thereby soon implementing development cooperation projects in a sustainable way.

After the talks, President Vo Van Thuong and President of Austria witnessed the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding between the Vietnamese Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Austrian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Photo: TG&VN.

The two sides agreed to strengthen cooperation activities in education-training, culture-arts and sports, and promote people-to-people exchanges. The Austrian President highly appreciated the Vietnamese community, which is small but well integrated into the socio-economic life in Austria, and agreed with President Vo Van Thuong’s proposal to continue to pay attention to and create favorable conditions for the Vietnamese community in Austria, as a bridge for the friendly relations between the two countries.

Discussing regional and international issues of mutual concern, President Vo Van Thuong highly appreciated Austria’s interest in promoting relations with Southeast Asia, and Vietnam, ready to act as a bridge to help Austria strengthen ties with ASEAN; suggested Austria as a bridge to help Vietnam strengthen ties with the EU.

The two leaders agreed to continue working closely at regional and international forums, especially the United Nations, the ASEAN-EU cooperation framework, to contribute to peace, cooperation and development in the region and the world. Regarding the East Sea, the two Leaders reaffirmed the importance of peace, stability, safety, security and freedom of navigation in the East Sea, supporting international law and the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS).

State President Vo Van Thuong invited the Austrian President and his wife to visit Vietnam soon and the Austrian President happily accepted the invitation.

Official welcome ceremony for President Vo Van Thuong to visit Austria

(PLO)- The welcome ceremony was attended by the service, parade of honor guards, soldiers and military music … according to the ceremony for the head of state.

WRITE THINKING