Polish Ambassador: Prime Minister Donald Tusk's visit to Vietnam to expand bilateral cooperation

Ambassador of Poland to Vietnam Joanna Skoczek. (Photo: Ngoc Anh)

Could your Excellency share the objectives, significance, and expectations of this visit and aim at efforts to advance bilateral relations?

This visit comes 16 years after his first visit to Vietnam during Mr. Donald Tusk's first tenure as Polish Prime Minister, and almost two years after Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh visited Warsaw. In this visit, two Prime Ministers discussed how to enhance and extend bilateral relations in many fields, especially in economy.

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Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk to pay official visit to Vietnam

In the in between, we also experienced the other important visit of our then President in 2017. At the same time, Vietnamese leaders on different levels also visited Poland.

Poland-Vietnam relationship has a history of long friendship, starting in 1950, when Poland recognized Vietnam, and since then strengthened throughout the years.

In the 60-80s of last centery, Poland offered the helping hand to Vietnam, educated Vietnamese students to be engineers, shipbuilders, military officers, geologists, architects, and economists. Those people came back to Vietnam to rebuild the country after the war.

And now, fast forward to today, both our countries are in a completely different position. Both our countries, Poland and Vietnam, respectively in their regions, are the economic leaders. Polish GDP growth is the highest in the European Union. Vietnam GDP growth is among the highest in Southeast Asia and in Asia in general. And we have new opportunities opening. We have based our cooperation on those long-lasting bonds, and we are looking forward.

And this visit is to confirm in what areas we see the biggest prospect of cooperation, such as education, trade, culture, people-to-people relations, cooperation at international forums, and I believe that the talks between the Prime Ministers will cover all those areas.

Some important documents will be signed during the visit to strengthen the treaty base between our countries. The most important will be the talks of my Prime Minister with all the leaders of Vietnam, and I can be sure that they will focus on economic cooperation, but also on the international situation in our respective regions and in the world.

Poland is an important trading partner of Vietnam in Central and Eastern Europe, while Vietnam is Poland's largest trading partner in Southeast Asia. Your Excellency, what have been the key highlights and positive developments in bilateral trade in recent years?

The most important trend and the highlight of our trade is the fact that the trade is growing year by year. And it is quite an important growth. According to Polish statistics, our trade exchange exceeded 8 billion USD last year. However, the problem is that this growth is mirrored by an increasing deficit in our relationship. Both countries are selling more, but Vietnam is selling much more to Europe and to Poland than Poland is selling to Vietnam. We want to discuss how two contries can improve this situation.

In the same time, upgrade and increase the trade and service relations, while experience bigger and faster growth of Poland's export to Vietnam. We are focusing on some sectors where we can see the potential for growth.

Nowadays, Vietnam is one of the biggest manufacturers in the world, so it's absolutely normal that countries being in such a position are selling a lot of goods, including electronics, IT, apparel, sport equipment, luxury goods, to Poland, while Poland, although we are saying selling more and more to Vietnam, we are selling goods with lower profit margin in a value chain.

That is why we are looking at those areas of the markets and those branches of the economy that can bring us more high-value products that are needed in Vietnam. The Vietnamese market is developing very quickly, and Vietnamese customers are demanding, they are looking for new products, they are looking for new trends, and state-of-the-art products. That is why we will have, during the Prime Minister's visit, important discussions focused on business in the areas such as pharmaceuticals, medical equipment, defence industry and dual-use, space cooperation...

We believe that the demand and supply on both sides can meet and we might be valuable partners developing those higher-end goods being sold to to Vietnam. What makes me very proud is the growing presence of Polish companies at the most important Vietnam trade first that are organized every year, both in Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi, such as in food and beverage, pharma and beauty, or mining...

Very recently, we welcomed here in Vietnam a mission of a dozen or so companies active in the green economy, circular economy, that were offering their products and their services, their technologies to their Vietnamese counterparts.

Besides, we know that Vietnam is focusing on sustainable development and is becoming more conscious ecologically. We went through this path in Poland. The Polish economic transformation of the past 35 years is exemplary, and we also needed to accommodate to the very high standards of the European Union in terms of ecology, and also we needed to help our economy, our businesses be more environmentally friendly.

Now we can share this knowledge. We are talking about water treatment, waste treatment, circular economy, soil reclamation, different technologies, products and services that might be used by the companies, by the localities. We know that Vietnam is a country very much at risk of the result of climate change, Poland experiences it every year, and many of those technologies and products might be also used to better manage the consequences of climate change.

The Embassy of Poland in Vietnam and the Institute of European and American Studies (Vietnam Academy of Social Sciences) jointly organized an international conference entitled “Leading green growth: Lessons from Poland’s economic transformation towards a circular and sustainable economy” on June 18. 2026. (Photo: Doan Ngan)

Beyond traditional trade, how can Vietnam and Poland share expertise in digital transformation, innovation, and green development?

Digital transformation is one of these areas where I see a lot of similarities between our countries.

Starting from a very low level of undeveloped technology, in the past couple of years our two countries developed very high capacities and capabilities in terms of digitization, and I can experience it every day while living here in Vietnam.

I think, in Poland, quite a lot to offer, because we also underwent an important digital transformation last year. This is about digital administration and digital services for businesses and for citizens. There are some elements that I would like to just give as an example. First is the digital system of tax refunds and tax declarations in Poland. I still remember when I started to declare my income and do my tax declaration, it was a lot of paperwork, very cumbersome, and very complicated. Now it takes less than 5 minutes for any taxpayer to just go online, check their declaration, make corrections if needed, sign, approve, and send it. That's something that we can share.

We also have a system that is called mObywatel, which stands for mobile citizen, and it is very similar to the Vietnamese system of VNeID, with slightly different features. I think we can also exchange our experience here when it comes to the security of digital of data and digital transactions, because Poland is really a stronghold in the European Union, and not only in the EU, also in the world when it comes to the service offered in the area of cybersecurity and security, for example banking transactions, security of data.

We are all under constant attack from hackers, and the security of our data in digital space is an absolute must if the citizens and the countries want to get more digital. And another area that I would also like to mention is e-health. We all remember very dire times of the pandemics only six years ago, but during that time Poland developed system of e-health that enabled patients to consult their doctors online very timely, in a secure secure way, and also e-prescription so that people don't need to go to doctor every time they need a prescription. It also might be done electronically, then to go to the pharmacy, just give the unique code and get your prescription realized.

There are just two very or three very concrete examples of digitization, and I think we can exchange our experience, we can also discuss how to internationalize it, but with the respect to personal data and with giving guarantees to the users of the highest possible security levels.

I think it's also important for business, both Polish business in Vietnam and Vietnamese business in Poland, because business will be more eager to come and invest when they know that their transactions are secured and that that they can freely and safely send data in order to conduct business properly.

Polish Ambassador to Vietnam Joanna Skoczek delivered remarks at the opening ceremony of the “Forming Identity” exhibition, marking the conclusion of a series of activities celebrating the 75th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between Vietnam and Poland (1950–2025). (Photo: Ngoc Anh)

How can the two governments further empower the Vietnamese community in Poland to promote trade and investment, facilitate education, and strengthen cultural ties and connect younger generations?

The Vietnamese community in Poland is one of the biggest and best-integrated groups. We are very proud to have citizens of Vietnamese origin living in Poland and they are very family-oriented, they are very well-organized and very entrepreneurial.

There are also a lot of Vietnamese businesses, and we already have the third generation of the Vietnamese living in Poland.

I appreciate their efforts and their successes in preserving their cultural heritage, traditions, and language. They are doing very well, and as I mentioned, they are very successful, we need people that are fluent not just into languages, but also into cultures and into traditions.

And the area that I would like to underline and where I see a lot of space for development is the area of education and culture, especially when it comes to people who can communicate between two cultures.

Especially, we are proud to have in Vietnam almost 130 Polish books translated into Vietnamese, but they are mostly translated by the translators of the older generation, while I believe that we also need the translators of a younger generation who will make the Vietnamese audience familiar with Polish books.

By the way, what I really missed to mention is the translation of Vietnamese books into Polish. Again, I believe that people who are fluent in languages and cultural sensibilities of both countries may really contribute hugely to better understanding of our nations.

Poland also offers a lot of scholarships and education programs for both Vietnamese living in Vietnam, and Polish citizens of Vietnamese origin.

I must say that in terms of education, Vietnam has been selected by Polish National Agency of Academic Exchange as one of the four priority countries, and that means that there will be special attention paid to the educational and scientific exchange. I think that young generations of both countries can really benefit from that and make our cooperation smoother.

It will bring benefits to business, to hospitality, to education, to research, and also we would like to welcome more Vietnamese people coming to Poland, they will always feel welcome, like many Polish people who are coming to Vietnam, tourism is growing.

I think two countries have a good basis, but my objective is to have very strong and very solid and very concrete projects for this cooperation. And I think that the visit of Prime Minister Donald Tusk is a great opportunity to discuss it.

Finally, I hope to see many Polish people who will just follow the steps of the Prime Minister and come to Vietnam looking for opportunities.

Thank you very much, Ambassador!

The handover ceremony for a shipment of humanitarian aid from the Polish Government to support disaster recovery efforts in Dak Lak province, December 28, 2025. (Photo: Embassy of Vietnam in Poland)

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