The European Parliament as a Catalyst for the European Community's Việt Nam Policy

The relations between Community-based Europe and Việt Nam have been studied in particular from the diplomatic normalization of 1990. However, this key moment is the culmination of a long process that began in 1973 and faded from the beginning of the Cambodian conflict. The European Economic Community was torn between development and commercial diplomacy that was intended to be more refined than the simple logic of a bloc in times of Cold War, and the deepening of relations with personalized Southeast Asia through ASEAN. Thus, the period 1979-1990 is particularly interesting, in that it offers a clear vision of the different currents that struggled through the community mechanisms to impose a Vietnamese policy in line with their aims. In these institutional movements, the European Parliament had increased the pressure on the Commission and the Council using different levers. Through inter-partisan struggles, parliamentarians have had to justify their points of view and produce reports and strategic analyses that were very useful when reassessing the merits of community policy. Finally, this presentation will focus on how parliamentary activism and the underlying thinking on the strategy to adopt towards Việt Nam progressively led to the normalization of relations. The process has helped to conceptualize and to strengthen the European Union's Asia strategy by integrating Việt Nam as an essential link in its policy, in an ultra-dynamic region where the EU wanted to avoid being marginalized.