Vietnam's Ministry of Industry and Trade has completed the proposal for signing the Vietnam-EFTA Free Trade Agreement (VEFTA) and submitted it to the Ministry of Justice for compliance review. Once the agreement takes effect, EFTA member states will immediately implement zero tariffs on more than 90% of tariff lines, covering 99.5% of Vietnam's export value to the bloc; textile, apparel, footwear and other major Vietnamese export categories are all on the immediate duty-free list.

Key Points

  • Vietnam's Ministry of Industry and Trade has completed the VEFTA signing proposal and submitted it to the Ministry of Justice for review; EFTA plans to immediately eliminate tariffs on over 90% of tariff lines, covering 99.5% of Vietnam's export value
  • Negotiations began in 2012 and took over 14 years and 21 formal rounds to complete full-text consultations
  • In 2024-2025, Vietnam's exports to EFTA included over US$26 million in textiles and apparel, over US$49 million in footwear, and over US$52 million in seafood

According to information disclosed by the Ministry of Industry and Trade, under the VEFTA framework, EFTA will immediately eliminate tariffs on all industrial goods, including seafood. The main export categories from which Vietnam is expected to benefit from immediate duty-free treatment include textiles and apparel, footwear, seafood, computers and electronic components, and machinery and equipment; EFTA has also committed to tariff reductions on some of Vietnam's key agricultural products such as rice, honey, fruits and vegetables.

Vietnam has correspondingly committed to eliminating tariffs on more than 86% of tariff lines, equivalent to 99.9% of its import value from EFTA, through either immediate zero tariffs or tariff reduction schedules ranging from 3 to 15 years.

VEFTA negotiations began in 2012, and only after 21 formal rounds and more than 14 years of consultations did the two sides reach agreement on the full text of the agreement. The agreement covers trade in goods and services, investment, rules of origin, technical barriers to trade, sanitary and phytosanitary measures, trade facilitation, government procurement, intellectual property, competition policy, small and medium-sized enterprises, and sustainable development.

Looking at recent trade data, Vietnam's better-performing export categories to the EFTA market in 2024-2025 included: seafood at over US$52 million, footwear at over US$49 million, computers and electronic components at over US$40 million, and textiles and apparel at over US$26 million; machinery and equipment, tools and spare parts, and transport vehicles also ranked among export categories. Vietnam's imports from EFTA are mainly for domestic production, including machinery and equipment, mechanical and electrical products, chemicals, seafood raw materials and pharmaceuticals.

On the investment front, Switzerland and Norway are EFTA's members with the closest ties to Vietnam. As of the end of 2025, Switzerland had 234 valid investment projects in Vietnam with total registered capital of over US$2.4 billion, ranking 20th among 153 countries and territories investing in Vietnam; Norway had 62 valid projects with registered capital of US$201.57 million, ranking 40th.

The Ministry of Industry and Trade said the signing of the agreement is expected to help Vietnamese enterprises diversify export markets and enhance the ease with which Vietnamese goods enter high-purchasing-power, high-quality-standard markets. EFTA's total annual imports amount to about US$630 billion, while imports from Vietnam currently account for only about 0.65%, leaving considerable room for growth. In addition, the agreement is seen as an opportunity to attract high-quality investment from EFTA countries into Vietnam's priority sectors, covering high technology, processing and manufacturing, clean energy, green transition, innovation and human resource development.

EFTA's current member states are Switzerland, Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein.

For the used clothing and textile and apparel trade industry, once the agreement is implemented, the tariff barriers for Vietnamese textile, apparel and footwear products entering the above four countries will essentially disappear, and their price competitiveness in Europe's high-purchasing-power markets will rise accordingly.

Source: Vietnam finalises proposal to sign free trade agreement with EFTA - Fibre2Fashion · Originally published on 2026-10-06