During his official visit to Poland from July 25-26, Deputy Prime Minister cum Foreign Minister Pham Binh Minh met with a number of high-ranking Polish officials and visited Vietnamese community representatives.

At these meetings, Deputy PM Minh expressed delight at his visit to Poland when both nations are preparing for the celebration of 65 years of diplomatic relations in 2015 and confirmed Vietnam’s consistent policy of further strengthening the sound traditional friendly relations with Poland.

The two sides agreed to maintain regular exchange visits between ministries and sectors aiming to beef up cooperation in specific areas thereby making mutually beneficial economic and trade cooperation commensurate with their full potential and good political relations.

Deputy PM and FM Pham Binh Minh giving a speech at a press briefing after his talks with Polish FM Radoslaw Sikorski.

Polish leaders told Minh that President Bronisław Komorowski will visit Vietnam next year.

At the meeting with the Polish Deputy Prime Minister cum Minister of Economy and business representatives, Deputy PM Minh affirmed Vietnam's willingness to create the best possible conditions for Polish firms to boost trade and investment in areas of their particular strengths such as shipbuilding, infrastructure development, environment processing technology and equipment, dairy production and processing and food processing.

Both sides consented to focus on alleviating difficulties and obstacles and accelerating the implementation of signed economic cooperation agreements, especially the use of a 250 million Euro credit provided by the Polish Government for Vietnam. They agreed to speed up the early establishment of a Vietnam-Poland Intergovernmental Committee in the near future.

Education and training cooperation is seen as a priority area in bilateral relations. Poland reiterated its readiness to facilitate Vietnamese students’ study by increasing the number of scholarships for them from 10 to 15 scholarships each year and soon signing a new education cooperation agreement.

The two countries concurred to enhance cooperation in environmental protection and waste water treatment and accelerate the early signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on Cooperation between the Vietnam Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment and the Ministry of Environment of the Republic of Poland.

They underlined the need to step up defence cooperation by promoting delegation exchange, staff training and technological transfer.

Polish leaders also commended the Vietnamese community’s positive contributions to their nation’s development, adding that it serves as an important bridge for the further promotion of the friendship between the two countries and the two peoples.

The two sides also exchanged view on international and regional issues of mutual concern and agreed to increase cooperation and mutual support at multilateral forums and international organizations, especially the UN and ASEM.

Vietnam, in its capacity as coordinator of the ASEAN-EU relations, is willing to help Poland further its relations with ASEAN. Poland confirmed its support for Vietnam’s relations with the European Union (EU) and the early conclusion of the Vietnam-EU Free Trade Agreement (EVFTA) negotiations before October 2014.

Poland will soon announce its early ratification of the Vietnam-EU   Partnership and Cooperation Agreement (PCA) that Vietnam has signed with the EU.

On the East Sea issue,  Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski said that his country supports the stance of resolving all disputes by peaceful measures in accordance with international law.

Deputy PM and FM Binh Minh used this occasion to invite his Polish counterpart Radoslaw Sikorski to visit Vietnam in the time to come.