When European Union Trade Commissioner Maroš Šefčovič sees Vietnam today, he ought to utilize his conferences with authorities to address Vietnam’s violations of the 2020 EU-Vietnam Free Trade Arrangement (EVFTA) and its broken pledges to the EU on human rights, including labor civil liberties.
Human Rights Watch and other teams repeatedly cautioned EU authorities concerning Vietnam’s civil liberties record prior to the EVFTA was ratified. But officials in Brussels claimed the arrangement would certainly motivate Vietnam to follow up on reforms.
Since then, as we noted in a letter to Šefčovič , Vietnam has not just fell short to undertake any significant reforms yet intensified its methodical suppression of fundamental flexibilities.
Vietnam has actually stopped working to validate an essential labor legal rights convention obliging it to allow independent profession unions to register and run freely, in spite of vowing to do so by the end of 2023, and has not taken steps to promote other treaties it has actually currently joined. It has likewise failed to execute small changes to its labor laws to allow the development of independent “worker depictive organizations.” Also if authorities permitted such groups, they would certainly be incapable to engage in basic union activities like choosing representatives or negotiating, and likely be forced to associate with the government-controlled Vietnam General Confederation of Labor.
The Vietnamese government has been clear it has no intention of enabling independent unions, with state media calling them “hostile pressures.” A Communist Party of Vietnam directive in 2023 purchased boosted examination of labor groups, civil society , and foreign organizations, specifically in the context of Vietnam’s execution of brand-new trade arrangements.
In 2021, a Vietnamese court punished reporter Pham Chi Dung to 15 years in prison, partly for his public plea to the European Parliament not to ratify the EVFTA. A few months later on, labor legal rights activists Mai Phan Loi and Dang Dinh Bach were detained after they attempted to join the EVFTA’s Domestic Advisory Team , charged with keeping an eye on implementation of the arrangement. In April 2024 authorities jailed Nguyen Van Binh and Vu Minh Tien , senior authorities who had advocated for more significant reforms.
In April 2025, a number of civils rights and labor groups submitted problems with the EU that Vietnam had actually breached labor and civils rights arrangements in the EVFTA. The EU needs to act on those issues and look for revengeful actions to compel Hanoi to stop its abuses and steer toward long-needed reforms.