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Nhan Dan newspaper reporter Van Nghiep Chuc, who accompanied the top legislator and the high-ranking Vietnamese delegation on the trip, reviews the top legislator’s engagements in the Swedish capital of Stockholm.
The official visit to Sweden made by NA Chairwoman Ngan achieved significant outcomes, contributing to accelerating cooperative relations between the two countries. During talks with the Speaker of the Swedish parliament, Urban Ahlin, the Vietnamese leader spoke highly of Sweden’s strength and experience in the field of justice and law, asking the Swedish parliament to continue supporting and sharing experience with the Vietnamese NA in making laws and supervising state agencies’ activities.
Over the past three days, both sides discussed many issues of their voters’ mutual concern such as gender equity, role of women in society, corruption prevention and control, environmental protection and the building of the educational and healthy systems. Sweden has a lot of admirable accomplishments to showcase. With a knowledge-based economy oriented towards high technology and a comprehensive social welfare system, Sweden soon took the lead in researching, applying and using green technology, clean technology, energy saving technology and renewable energy. According to an information official of the Swedish parliament, Sweden has also been rated by many internationally prestigious organisations as a leading country in innovation and educational quality.
The issue of gender equity was high on agenda of discussions between the top legislators of both sides. Sweden is one of the countries successfully exercising gender equality. The Swedish government has established a people’s inspectorate in charge of gender equity in order to ensure that relevant rights are respected and enforced. Twelve of the 24 current ministers of the Swedish government are women, while nearly a half of the parliament’s deputies are also women.
Receiving NA Chairwoman Ngan, the Mayor of Stockholm Eva-Louis Erlandsson Slorach gladly informed that Stockholm has been honoured as the first “green city” of the European Union (EU) for satisfying benchmarks on clean water, fresh air and people’s awareness in protecting natural resources. She shared experience in building the “green city” model, which gathers joint efforts of the authorities, organisations and the community in managing the wastewater system. The currently applied method is to put wastewater into “containers” for disposal before pouring it into 23 lakes across the city, or to process redundant daily food into biogas to run buses. With their functions, members of the Stockholm Municipality are allowed to question the Municipality if there are any acts of adversely affecting the environment or violating common regulations.
Sweden gave the Vietnamese guests a warm and familiar feel of a beautiful, peaceful and hospitable country. The fine traditional friendly relations between the Vietnamese and Swedish people have been tested and nurtured over the past half century. During conversations with members of the Vietnamese delegation, middle-aged Swedish friends respectfully recalled years of Vietnam’s struggle for national liberation and reunification as thousands of people of Sweden’s older generation thronged the streets to march against the war in Vietnam.
The high-level Vietnamese delegation bid farewell to the country as the people there were still in a state of shock following the recent truck attack in downtown Stockholm, which killed three people and injured eight others. Many members of the delegation, along with officials of the Vietnamese Embassy in Sweden, went to the scene of the attack and laid a wreath to pay tribute to the victims. Karin Wanngard, former Mayor of Stockholm, strongly affirmed that the local citizens would soon stand up and resume their normal life.
