From the overall picture of policies within the European Green Deal framework, it can be seen that Vietnam’s production, export of agricultural and food products are facing considerable challenges from the green trend in this market.

Specifically, green policies related to manufacture, export of agricultural and food products from Vietnam to EU have some below noteworthy items:

- For quantity, in comparison with many other sectors, the number of green measures, policies relating to agricultural and food products (including those which are manufactured within the EU and imported from the outside) is considerably bigger (maybe only after the climate sector). Moreover, in efforts to achieve the target “for a sustainable food system for human and the Earth”, the EU is continuing their new actions in this aspect, thus, the number of green and sustainable standards for agricultural and food products may be increasing, especially from now until 2030; 

- For nature, except for policies of support and recommendations under EU’s Common Agricultural Policies (CAP) framework which apply only to manufacturing, processing of agricultural and food products in the EU territory, a majority of other measures (especially under “Farm to Fork” strategy) are mandatory, thus once effective, they will become minimum standards with which relevant agricultural and foods products must comply if they want to enter the EU market for consumption;

- For scope, besides CAP, the majority of measures in this sector are designed to be applicable to both EU’s products and imported goods from the outside to the EU. Particularly, in some cases, measures are designed directly towards subjects that are goods products imported to the EU (i.e. EUDR). Therefore, the production and export of agricultural and food products to the EU should pay attention to all EU green policies, especially under the Farm to Fork Strategy;

- For subjects: Several measures in this group are commonly applicable to all kinds of agricultural and food products (i.e.: regulations relating to pesticides, packaging, etc.). However, some others are only relevant to a certain number of products (i.e.: organic food regulations only relate to agricultural and food products with organic labels; EUDR is only applicable to product groups with a high risk of being planted on deforested land such as coffee, cocoa, etc.). Therefore, to identify whether a kind of agricultural and food product is under the applicable scope of a specific green policy or not, it is necessary to study the details specifically, not just look at the name generally.

- For impacted aspects: As of now, identified EU green policies for agricultural and food products have impacts on many steps in the whole production chain, from farming (i.e.: regulations on use of pesticide, animal captivity, etc.), processing (i.e.: regulations on animal transport, slaughter, etc.) to packaging the finished products (i.e.: regulations on packaging, labelling, etc.). Therefore, manufacturers, exporters of agricultural and food products to the EU shall have to follow for their awareness and compliance with these regulations during the process/production chain not only focus on final products. 

All above characteristics have shown that the following and compliance with EU green policies in the agricultural and food products sector is quite challenging and complicated for any foreign manufacturers and exporters. For Vietnamese manufacturers and exporters of agricultural and food products, the challenges may be bigger in the context (i) production of agricultural and aquaculture products in Vietnam is often organized scattering by single business households, small-scale farms with the loose linkage between raw material areas and  factories, etc., which whole chain control is very complex; and (ii) processing factories, especially of agricultural and food products are often of limited capital scale, use simple and not-easy-to-revise technologies to meet new requirements, but they don’t have enough resources to invest for complete transformation.

Source: Report "EU Green Deal and Vietnam's Exports - The case of the agricultural, food and textile industries" – Center for WTO and International Trade

• Ways of European Green Deal’s impacts on Vietnam’s exports
• EU Green Deal and Vietnam's export: Impacted sectors
• EU Green Deal and Vietnam's export: Challenges of awareness change and enhancement
• EU Green Deal and Vietnam's export: Challenge in capability of response, compliance
• EU Green Deal and Vietnam's export: Challenge in the capacity of paying compliance fees