Vietnam’s Communist Party chief and president, To Lam, traveled to Brussels this week for an official visit to the European Union and Belgium, underscoring a relationship that has expanded rapidly in recent years.
The visit followed Vietnam’s signing of a free trade agreement with the European Free Trade Association, comprising Norway, Switzerland, Iceland and Liechtenstein, adding further momentum to Hanoi’s growing economic integration with Europe.
Khac Giang Nguyen, a visiting fellow at the ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute in Singapore, described the relationship as “a welcome advertisement for keeping markets open” amid global tariff conflicts.
“Vietnam offers Europe an established manufacturing base and another foothold in Asian supply chains,” Nguyen told DW, adding that Europe in turn provides Vietnam with “capital, technology and a large market.”
Vietnam is now the EU’s largest goods-trading partner in Southeast Asia and its 14th-largest trading partner globally, with the EU ranking as Vietnam’s fourth-largest partner overall.
The EU-Vietnam Free Trade Agreement, which took effect in August 2020, has substantially expanded commercial ties, though the EU’s goods-trade deficit with Vietnam reached 51.7 billion euros in 2025, up from roughly 24 billion euros in 2019.
Alfred Gerstl, an expert on Indo-Pacific international relations at the University of Vienna, described Vietnam as a key strategic partner for the EU, noting that cooperation is “crucial for advancing the EU’s economic security agenda and its strategy of de-risking from China.”
In January, both sides upgraded ties to a Comprehensive Strategic Partnership, the first such agreement between the EU and a Southeast Asian country, while EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas held talks with Foreign Minister Le Hoai Trung on security cooperation in the South China Sea.
Despite these advances, 12 international human rights organizations sent an open letter to European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and European Council President Antonio Costa this week, raising “grave concerns over the Vietnamese government’s intensifying repression.”
Rights groups argue that Hanoi has failed to honor commitments made during EVFTA negotiations, including pledges to reform labor legislation and align domestic regulations with International Labour Organization standards, with Vietnam still yet to ratify the ILO convention on freedom of association.
“The EU has taken no action in response to Vietnam’s repeated breaches of its EVFTA-related obligations and pledges; instead, in January it upgraded bilateral relations,” the joint letter stated directly.
Hai Thiem Bui, a researcher at the Stockholm Center for Global Asia at Stockholm University, noted that the trade agreement’s benefits have been unevenly distributed across sectors, firms, and social groups.
“The next phase of EU-Vietnam trade relations is likely to depend less on tariff liberalization and more on whether Vietnam can adapt to increasingly demanding EU standards concerning labor rights, sustainability, and regulatory governance,” Bui added.
Vietnamese exporters also face mounting compliance demands under the EU’s Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism and its deforestation regulations, which require businesses to provide detailed information about their production processes.
The EU-Vietnam Investment Protection Agreement, signed in 2019, has still not entered into force, with France, the Netherlands and several other member states yet to complete ratification, despite Germany doing so in February and Poland in April.
Chris Humphrey, executive director of the EU-ASEAN Business Council, acknowledged the gap, telling DW: “We have also seen an uptick in investments by European businesses in Vietnam, despite the lack of an Investment Protection Agreement being in place.”
Humphrey expressed confidence that trade would continue to expand, saying that “with a new government in Vietnam pursuing an ambitious legislative program but with an overall target of maintaining Vietnam’s extraordinary growth path, we would expect trade to continue to flourish.”
For Brussels, the central challenge of the relationship’s next phase will be ensuring European businesses benefit from Vietnam’s growth while proving that its stated commitments to human rights and sustainable trade carry genuine weight.
