Abstract: The flammability of ethylene vinyl acetate copolymer (EVA) based composite materials greatly limits their application as terminal products in the wire and cable industry. The traditional metal hydroxide flame retardants show low flame-retardant efficacy and poor compatibility with the polymer matrix, which usually results in the loss of mechanical properties. To address the drawbacks, a dual inorganic filler system was constructed by combining the traditional inorganic flame-retardant aluminum hydroxide (ATH) and the halloysite nanotube (HNT) and introduced to ethylene vinyl acetate copolymer-polyethylene (EVA-PE) composite. The thermal stability, flame retardancy, rheological properties and mechanical properties of the resulting EVA-PE composites were systemically investigated. The results demonstrate that peak heat release rate (PHRR), total heat release (THR) and total smoke production (TSP) of EVA-PE composite containing 59wt% ATH and 1wt% HNT decrease by 42.1%, 33.7% and 43.6%, respectively, when compared to EVA-PE composite with only 60wt% ATH. The combustion intensity and the release of toxic smoke are decreased significantly. Besides, the tensile strength and elongation at break of ATH59-HNT1/EVA-PE increase by 25.9% and 71.8%, respectively. The flame retardant mechanism analysis shows that the incorporated HNT can improve the ATH dispersion and promote the filler network formation in the polymer matrix, which is beneficial to the formation of consistent char layer during combustion. This work proposes a feasible strategy for obtaining high performance composites for wire and cable industry.