Vietnam issues resolution on visa waiver for 5 Western European countries’ citizens

On June 30^th, 2016, Vietnamese Government passed the resolutions No.56/NQ-CP on extending the validity of visa exemption for UK, French, German, Spanish and Italian citizens.

European tourists to Vietnam

According to the resolution, visa waiver for citizens of 5 Western European countries takes effects from July 1^st, 2016 to June 30^th, 2017. Citizens of these 5 countries are exempted from visa to enter and stay in Viet Nam for maximum 15 days regardless of the passport types and purposes of the trip.

(According to: Vietnam Tourism)

The main content of the Resolution No.56/NQ-CP is extracted as follows:

DECISION:

Article 1: Extend the validity of visa waiver with the duration of 1 year - until the end of June 30^th, 2017 - for citizens of the United Kingdom, French Republic, Federal Republic of Germany, Kingdom of Spain and Italian Republic when entering Vietnam and staying for no more than 15 days from the entry day, regardless of the types of passport, purposes of entry, as long as the citizens satisfy all the requirements predescribed by Vietnam law.

Article 2: This resolution will be effective from the date of signing.

Article 3: Ministers, heads of ministerial-level agencies, governmental agencies, chairmen of the People’s committee of provinces, municipalities are responsible for implementing this resolution.  

This resolution is expected to bring some positive effects to foreign tourists who are citizens of the 5 European countries as well as Vietnam tourism like the previous program did. In the past period, Vietnamese government also approved similar visa waiver program for citizens of those 5 European countries (from July 1^st, 2015 to June 30^th, 2016); and in reality, arrivals from those countries has risen by 14 percent between July 2015 and March 2016.

Despite the positive effects of the resolution, the industry insiders still consider this to have some disadvantage. They said the allowed stay (15 days) is too short for those who want to take long-haul packages to explore various tourist attractions across Vietnam. It is also difficult for travel agencies and tour organizers to design proper tour packages in Vietnam.

The Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism is urging the government to enable a 5-year visa waiver for the mentioned five European countries with an allowed stay of 30 days for each entry in the next policy.