Vietnam, France upgrade relations to Comprehensive Strategic Partnership

Updated Oct. 8, 2024, 03:40 a.m. ET.

Vietnam and France have upgraded bilateral relations to a Comprehensive Strategic Partnership, making France the first European Union and only the eighth country in the world to have the highest-level relationship with the Southeast Asian nation.

The agreement came during a meeting between Vietnamese President and Communist Party General Secretary To Lam and French President Emmanuel Macron in Paris on Sunday, Vietnamese media reported.

France is Vietnam’s fifth-biggest European trading partner, with bilateral trade worth US$4.8 billion last year and $3.4 billion in the first eight months of 2024, according to Vietnam’s trade ministry.

During the meeting at the Elysee Palace, Lam asked Macron to encourage French companies to take advantage of the EU-Vietnam Free Trade Agreement and help to speed up ratification of an EU-Vietnam Investment Protection Agreement.

Lam asked for the French president’s help in persuading the EU to lift its “yellow card” on his country’s seafood exports. Vietnam received the warning in 2017 for failing to do enough to tackle illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing.

The two leaders also discussed ways their countries' businesses could work more closely together, tapping French expertise in aerospace, artificial intelligence, transport infrastructure and clean energy.

During Lam’s visit, the first by a Vietnamese head of state to former colonial power France in 22 years, delegations signed agreements in the fields of diplomacy, culture, education, transportation and internal affairs, the Vietnam News Service reported.

They included a memorandum of understanding, or MoU, on transport cooperation, signed by Vietnam\ese Transport Minister Nguyen Van Thang and French Development Agency Director Philippe Orliange.

The French government has already provided the lion’s share of loans to fund the much-delayed Nhan-Hanoi Station Urban Railway project, which began in 2010 and is nine years behind its original completion date.

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Lam and Macron talked about the need for closer cooperation between their armed forces and law enforcement agencies, agreeing to organize a Strategic Security and Defense Dialogue in the near future and work in areas such as officer training.

France ruled Vietnam as a colony from 1887 to 1954 when Ho Chi Minh’s forces defeated the French garrison at Dien Bien Phu. 

Lam told Macron his government appreciated the visit of French Armed Forces Minister Sebastien Lecornu to mark the 70th anniversary of the battle “which reflects a spirit of respecting history, breaking with the past and looking into the future,” according to the Voice of Vietnam.

Raising France to the top partnership level is in line with the main thrust of Vietnam’s foreign policy, which is to diversify and multilateralize its relations, Carl Thayer, emeritus professor at the University of New South Wales, Canberra, told RFA.

“France is now the fourth permanent member of the United Nations Security Council to be a comprehensive strategic partner of Vietnam,” the veteran Vietnam watcher said.

“The immediate political and strategic importance of having France as a comprehensive strategic partner is to be able to leverage this relationship to resolve outstanding issues with the European Union and to assist France develop its relations with ASEAN.”

Vietnamese media did not say whether Lam and Macron discussed human rights, an issue highlighted by about 100 Vietnamese protesters at a three-hour demonstration in Paris on Saturday.

“I am a representative of the free Vietnamese people of the southern region of France,” Lam Hoang Tung from Marseille told a Radio Free Asia reporter at the protest.

“The reason I came here on this occasion is to request the French government to force To Lam to release prisoners of conscience who are being imprisoned in Vietnam and to ask To Lam to respect his promises on human rights issues.” 

Domestic activists, as well as international rights groups and organizations, including the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, have been critical of Vietnam’s rights record in areas such as minority rights and freedom of speech.

Vietnam regularly denies allegations of human rights violations stating that the accusations are based on false and unverified information.

Updated to add comments by Carl Thayer.

RFA Vietnamese contributed to this story.

Edited by Taejun Kang.