I saved my address book from my old android phone but Fairphone 5 cannot read it. There is no specification given WHY it is not possible or what the problem is. I thought vcf is generally accepted. Has anyone had the same problem?
It might still be the case that the format is not exactly standard compliant on either the old or the new phone, so there could be some incompatibility there that prevents import.
Without knowing the actual error it’s hard to tell. Android is not very good at giving detailed information, unfortunately.
Depending on your tech skills, you could try using a “vcard validator” to figure out what’s wrong with your file. Searching for that yields some online checkers as well as Python modules.
Beware: When using an online checker, your private address book potentially ends up on someone else’s server!
Can you specify how exactly you are importing the file?
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If you have a standard usage of Android in conjunction with a Google account, this wouldn’t be necessary, since contacts are synchronized automatically. However, many of us are wary of entrusting GAFAM operators with our data, and rightly so in my opinion. I take it this is your case.
You might consider using a non-Playstore / Google based app for your contacts, instead of the Google app which comes with FPOS (the standard Fairphone Android that comes with the phone). I can recommend “Fossify Contacts” which you can get from the F-Droid store. More info here.
As to compatibility of vcf, what version of Android or the Contacts app were you running on the old phone?
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The phone is not reading the file, it’s an app. Which one do you use ? So you could try another one …
I once had trouble because my app couldn’t read a file with VCF version 2.1 so I replaced “2.1” with “3.0” 
Have a look at the beginning of the file and you’ll probably see something like
BEGIN:VCARD
VERSION:3.0
What does your file look like ?
Thank you. I found out that fp did not like contacts with more than THREE phone numbers…
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It was ONE file with more than 1000 contacts which I saved on my new fp. But then I transferred smaller packages (30-50 contacts) and most of them where accepted. Until I found out that some contacts it didn’t like… Reason: Too many phone numbers in One contact.
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Strange. I have a contact with 12 phone numbers, though I’ve never needed to import it. It poses no problem for synchronisation.
Were you using the default Google Contacts app or a different app?
No google apps on my fp. 
It is called Kontakte (a slightly changed version of LineageOS). Open source. Version 1.7.34
(part of adreoid_packages_apps_contacts)