Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures (SPS) are all regulations, conditions and mandatory requirements for imported goods in order to protect the lives and health of people, animals and plants, through ensuring food safety and/or preventing the entry of diseases of plant and animal origin.

Technical barriers to trade (TBT) are standards and technical regulations that a country applies to imported goods and/or conformity assessment procedures of imported goods to ensure the compliance with the standards or technical regulations.

The EVFTA has a Chapter on Customs and Trade Facilitation (Chapter 4) and a Protocol (Protocol 2) on Administrative Cooperation between Vietnam and the EU in the field of customs. Commitments on Customs in the EVFTA apply to both Vietnam and the EU (including Germany), with the main contents on simplification and facilitation of import and export procedures, and a number of commitments on specific customs procedures, applicable to all imported and exported goods.

Regulations on origin certification procedures in the EVFTA are applied to all types of goods. The EVFTA allows two types of origin certification, including:

Case 1: Wholly Obtained Products This case includes products that are naturally formed within the territory of Vietnam or EU member states (e.g. minerals, naturally formed animals, plants and products of these plant and animal species).

In order to enjoy EVFTA tariff preferences when exporting to Germany or importing from Germany into Vietnam, products must meet the EVFTA's rules of origin (ROO) and procedures for certification of origin.

The commitments on remanufactured goods in the EVFTA only applies to products in Chapters 84, 85, 87, 90 and 9402 that have a part or all of the parts from used products but having similar performance and working conditions, life expectancy and warranty compared to the original new goods

Vietnam's tariff commitments in the EVFTA include (i) commitments on import tariffs (applied to goods imported from the EU into Vietnam), and (ii) commitments on export tariffs (applied to goods exported from Vietnam to EU countries).

In the EVFTA, the EU (including Germany) committed to eliminate import tariffs for most Vietnamese products right after the Agreement came into force (August 1, 2020), the remaining products will be liberalised over a transitional period or imposed tariff quotas.

Tariff commitments are stated in Chapter 2 – “National Treatment and Market Access for Goods” of the EVFTA full text