General Secretary To Lam and Spouse visit Bulgaria: Opening promising cooperation prospects
WVR - Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Le Thi Thu Hang believes the visit will open promising cooperation prospects, aligning with Vietnam's strategic direction in the new era.
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| General Secretary To Lam and Bulgarian President Rumen Radev, November 2024. (Source: VNA) |
On the occasion of General Secretary To Lam and his spouse's official visit to Bulgaria, Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Le Thi Thu Hang gave an interview to the press regarding the purpose and significance of the visit.
Could the Deputy Minister elaborate on the significance and purpose of General Secretary To Lam's official visit to Bulgaria?
At the invitation of Bulgarian President Rumen Radev, General Secretary To Lam and his spouse, along with a high-level Vietnamese delegation, will officially visit the Republic of Bulgaria from October 22-24. The visit takes place at a meaningful time, as Vietnam and Bulgaria celebrate 75 years of diplomatic relations. This is the first visit by a General Secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam since Bulgaria's regime change in 1990.
Following the official visit to Finland, General Secretary To Lam's official visit to Bulgaria conveys a message of sincere affection and respect from the Party, State, and people of Vietnam towards traditional partners and friends who have provided invaluable support in Vietnam's past struggles for national defense and current nation-building efforts. The visit also offers Vietnam an opportunity to open new cooperation spaces with Bulgaria specifically and the Balkan region in general.
As one of the first countries to establish diplomatic relations with Vietnam in 1950, the Vietnam-Bulgaria friendship has been diligently nurtured by generations of leaders and citizens from both nations. In August 1957, President Ho Chi Minh paid an official friendly visit to Bulgaria, laying the foundation for a prosperous phase in bilateral relations, with Bulgaria providing valuable material and spiritual support to Vietnam in its fight for national liberation and defense.
The Vietnamese people always remember the image of thousands of Bulgarian students and citizens protesting the war in Vietnam. The Vietnam-Bulgaria Hospital in Thai Binh and the Vietnam-Bulgaria Kindergarten in Hanoi are heartfelt gifts from the Bulgarian people to the capital's citizens. Bulgaria has trained thousands of Vietnamese experts with university and postgraduate degrees and tens of thousands of skilled workers, providing a valuable high-quality human resource for Vietnam's nation-building and development efforts.
This visit will be an opportunity for high-level leaders from both countries to review the achievements in bilateral relations and set strategic directions to elevate the longstanding traditional friendship between Vietnam and Bulgaria to new heights, especially in areas where Bulgaria has strengths and Vietnam has needs, such as information technology, quantum, artificial intelligence (AI), digital transformation, green transition, and biomedicine. Additionally, this is an opportunity for both countries to firmly establish a reliable bridge connecting Bulgaria with ASEAN and vice versa, Vietnam with the EU.
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| Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Lê Thị Thu Hằng. (Photo: Nguyễn Hồng) |
Could the Deputy Minister assess the Vietnam-Bulgaria relations in recent times and share your expectations for General Secretary To Lam's visit?
Seventy-five years of building and developing relations mark a historical period of mutual support in each other's development efforts and achievements in almost all areas of bilateral cooperation.
In politics and diplomacy, both sides regularly maintain high-level and various-level exchanges, implementing periodic bilateral cooperation mechanisms, thereby establishing a deep political trust foundation. Bilateral trade turnover has continuously grown in recent years.
In education and training, the two countries have signed a cooperation program for 2025-2028 and are considering expanding cooperation in Bulgaria's strong fields like information technology, cybersecurity, e-government, and public administration. Cooperation in other areas such as defense, security, culture, and labor is also seeing new developments.
Both sides are implementing scientific research cooperation tasks and establishing a science and technology cooperation committee, focusing on new fields like biotechnology, information and communication technology, digital transformation, artificial intelligence, and green energy. This promises to bring new cooperation frameworks suitable to each side's potential and needs, contributing significantly to each country's development.
We expect the visit to open new cooperation opportunities in trade and investment by opening markets to each other, effectively implementing the Vietnam-EU Free Trade Agreement (EVFTA), and urging the European Commission to soon ratify the EU-Vietnam Investment Protection Agreement (EVIPA), thereby enhancing investment cooperation and further increasing bilateral trade turnover between Vietnam and Bulgaria as well as other EU partners.
Building on the traditional friendship between the two countries, I also hope the visit will further enhance people-to-people exchanges, promoting tourism and cultural cooperation, and educational training collaboration.
I hope to see more cultural and artistic activities in both countries, following successful events like the Bulgarian Rose Festival, Slavic Script Culture Day in Hanoi, Vietnamese performances at the International Folk Culture Festival in Burgas, and the International Art Festival in Sozopol, which have effectively contributed to mutual understanding between the two peoples.
With sincere and close relations, I am confident that General Secretary To Lam and his spouse's official visit to Bulgaria will open promising cooperation prospects, aligning with Vietnam's strategic direction in the new era, bringing many positive outcomes for the benefit of the people of both countries, and for peace, stability, cooperation, and development in each region and the world.
