Does EU-Vietnam free trade break provisions on human rights ?

The rationale of the EU affixing human rights conditions to free trade agreements has again been called into question after rights groups filed a complaint over Vietnam’s crackdown on human rights defenders.

The International Federation for Human Rights, and its member organization, the Vietnam Committee on Human Rights (VCHR), filed a complaint to the European Commission’s trade department on February 4.

The complaint alleges that Vietnam’s ongoing crackdown on human rights defenders working on the sustainable development clauses of the EU-Vietnam Free Trade Agreement (EVFTA) violates the deal.

« It is high time the EU held Vietnam accountable for these gross violations of the trade agreement. Vietnamese defenders must feel safe and free to demand accountability and stand up for the rights of their communities, » VCHR president Penelope Faulkner said in a statement.

Since the 1990s, the EU has often included human rights clauses in framework agreements when negotiating free trade deals with other countries, although some campaigners say that Brussels has shown little appetite to enforce its terms.

This has led some to question the rationale of using trade to drive social change.

Ben Swanton, co-director of Project88, a human rights group, told DW that « it makes no sense for the EU to include human rights conditions in free trade agreements if they are not serious about enforcing those conditions. »

Human rights promised under free trade agreement

Before the European Parliament ratified the EVFTA in 2020, Vietnamese campaigners and NGOs lobbied Brussels to make the human rights provisions binding and to include suspension clauses for grave human rights violations.

In 2019, journalist Pham Chi Dung was arrested just two days after publicly calling on the European Parliament to postpone ratification of the EVFTA pending concrete progress on human rights in Vietnam.

Michel Tran Duc of Viet Tan, an exiled pro-democracy group, said « the European Commission never agreed to establish such a binding mechanism. »

In Duc’s opinion, the EU was « trapped » by Hanoi’s promise that the human rights provisions would be secured by both sides. 

Domestic Advisory Groups (DAGs) were supposed to provide independent assessments of whether Hanoi was adhering to the trade deal’s environmental and human rights conditions.

Vietnam rejects independent oversight

Although the EU’s advisory group included genuinely independent NGOs and civil society organizations in Vietnam, Hanoi’s advisory group consisted solely of state-affiliated NGOs, he said.

« All applications submitted by independent NGOs to join the Vietnam DAG were rejected, and some of their founders were even imprisoned, » Duc added, referring to the jailed environmental activists Hoang Thi Minh Hong and Ngo Thi To Nhien.

« As a result, the monitoring mechanism has been biased from the outset. »

Dang Dinh Bach, who was sentenced to five years in prison in 2022, was likely arrested because he advocated for genuine civil society participation in Vietnam’s DAG, analysts say.

Profits over values ?

More cynical human rights campaigners argue that the EU is simply putting profits over values.

A Vietnamese activist, who requested anonymity, told DW that Brussels isn’t incentivized to pick a fight with Hanoi because European companies profit from Vietnam’s booming economy.

Since the EVFTA took effect in 2020, EU-Vietnam trade has grown from €35 billion to €52 billion (from $36.5 billion to $54.2 billion), according to the European Chamber of Commerce in Vietnam.

A European Commission spokesperson told DW that it is in the process of conducting its preliminary assessment of the complaint filed earlier this month.

« This may involve asking for further clarifications from the complainant, » they added. « The Commission will then inform the complainant of the outcome of its preliminary assessment in due course.

Alternative means for the EU on human rights advocacy ?

The latest controversy has sparked debate on whether the EU should consider means other than free trade agreements to pressure countries on human rights, especially as it is negotiating free trade deals with several other Southeast Asian states with questionable human rights records.

The Thai government said it intends to wrap up free trade talks with the EU by the end of the year, but it is thought that negotiations have been slow because Brussels was concerned over the human rights of migrant workers in Thailand, particularly those working in the illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing industry, which has long been a focus of the EU.

Phil Robertson, director of Asia Human Rights and Labour Advocates, told DW that failure to enforce one set of FTA provisions in Vietnam, « undermines efforts to achieve effective application of all FTA provisions. »

« The EU is proceeding down a very slippery slope if they continue their nonchalant negligence in the face of unpleasant facts about labor and human rights from the ground level in Vietnam, » Robertson added.

However, the EU has previously reacted to worsening human rights conditions in Cambodia and Myanmar by removing their preferential trade benefits. Brussels’ first attempts to negotiate a free trade deal with Thailand collapsed in 2014 in response to a military coup in Bangkok.

Human rights groups that spoke to DW said that they do not think there are alternative ways for the EU to influence human rights conditions in other countries, and they would certainly oppose Brussels cutting out all human rights terms from trade deals.

More enforcement needed 

Instead, they say that the EU simply needs to enforce the promises it has compelled foreign governments to make.

Kristoffer Marslev, a researcher at the Technical University of Denmark, told DW that the EU realizes its own mistakes and has vowed « stronger pre-ratification conditionality and more assertive enforcement » of trade deals’ trade and sustainable development (TSD) chapters, where human rights conditions are usually included.

After a 2022 review by the European Commission and Parliament, Brussels announced plans to adopt a stronger approach to « implementation and enforcement of TSD chapters, » according to a November 2023 briefing.

It will do this, it added, by « extending the standard state-to-state dispute settlement to the TSD chapter and the possibility to use trade sanctions as a last resort for material breaches of the Paris Climate Agreement and the fundamental labor principles of the International Labour Organization. »

The EU-New Zealand FTA, signed in July 2023, was the first agreement to integrate the new TSD approach, it said.

However, Marslev noted that it « remains to be seen » whether this new approach can boost the effectiveness of the trade and sustainable development chapters and improve the EU’s « poor track record. »

By David Hutt – Deutsche Presse Agentur – February 20, 2025