On October 13, 2022, at the headquarter of the Eurasian Economic Commission, Minister of Industry and Trade of Vietnam Nguyen Hong Dien and Minister of Trade of the Eurasian Economic Commission (EEC) Andrey Slepnev co-chaired the 4th meeting of the Joint Committee on the Implementation of the Free Trade Agreement between Vietnam and the Eurasian Economic Union (VN - EAEU FTA) and evaluating the results of the five-year implementation of the Agreement. Attending the meeting, on the Vietnamese side, there were Vietnamese Ambassador to Russia Dang Minh Khoi and other representatives of the Ministry of Industry and Trade.

The two Ministers agreed that the VN-EAEU FTA has contributed to the strong development of two-way trade between Vietnam and the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) member countries.

At the meeting, Minister Slepnev provided information on the implementation of the VN-EAEU FTA, according to which, in general, the results of the first five years of the Agreement's implementation showed a stable growth rate in trade turnover between the EAEU and Vietnam, with an increase of 32.2% (from US$5.9 billion in 2017 to US$7.8 billion in 2021, according to EAEU data).

However, the preferential utilization rate from this Agreement is still modest (with an average rate of other FTAs of more than 40%). This shows that bilateral economic and trade cooperation still has a lot of potential, it is necessary to make efforts to remove obstacles for development.

Minister Nguyen Hong Dien frankly assessed that a number of provisions and commitments of the Agreement were no longer relevant to the current context. Therefore, he propose that both sides should amend this FTA to jointly exploit new potentials and opportunities, and while implementing necessary procedures to amend the Agreement, the two Parties need to seek to remove current obstacles and difficulties and promote bilateral trade. On that basis, Minister Dien asked the EAEU side to consider Vietnam's concerns regarding safeguard trigger measure and the volume of tariff quota for rice.

Regarding the requirements of the EAEU for the possibility of opening the market for some cognac products, increasing the export of wheat, beef and fertilizer to Vietnam. In response to this point, Ministry of Industry and Trade of Vietnam would be willing to coordinate with relevant ministries and sectors in the spirit of being ready to open the market and balance the interests of the two sides.

At the meeting, the two ministers also summarized the results of the meeting of the Sub-Committee on Rules of Origin (under the Joint Committee), whereby the technical level officials held an online meeting on September 30, 2022. The groups proposed amendments to the Annex on product-specific rules and the implementation of the Protocol on Electronic Information Exchange within the Electronic Origin Certification and Verification System.

In addition, a new issue raised by the EAEU at this meeting is green economic development. This is also an issue that Vietnam is very interested in, so the Vietnamese side welcomes this proposal and looks forward to receiving cooperation and experience sharing from the EAEU.

At the end of the Meeting, the two Ministers signed the Protocol of the Meeting and agreed to report to the Governments of the two sides to promote the points agreed upon by the two sides.