Demanding Legitimate Trade: Civil Society Responses to Authoritarianism and Human Rights Abuses in the EU-Vietnam Free Trade Agreement (EVFTA) and Voluntary Partnership Agreement (VPA)

This paper discusses the diverging responses by European and Vietnamese civil society actors to EU-Vietnam trade relations in two related policy processes: the EU-Vietnam Free Trade Agreement (EVFTA) and the Forest Law Enforcement, Governance and Trade (FLEGT) Voluntary Partnership Agreement (VPA). In both agreements, the EU explicitly links trade to sustainability objectives; yet, civil society perceptions on their legitimacy have been very different. For the EVFTA, both European and expat Vietnamese civil society groups have called out the EU for legitimizing an authoritarian regime, and for not providing a suitable response to civil and human rights abuses in Vietnam. This critique has found its way into the centre of political debates in Europe, casting a shadow of uncertainty on the ratification of the EVFTA. Meanwhile, the VPA, aimed at halting illegal timber trade, has remained mostly depoliticized, despite several clear legitimacy challenges regarding accountability and government corruption in the forest sector. This research explains the diverging reactions by European and Vietnamese civil society by looking at the embeddedness of the two agreements in their wider policy spheres, trade and forest governance respectively. Based on interviews conducted in Brussels and Vietnam, it shows how perceptions on ‘political’ versus ‘technical’ policy spheres shape legitimacy demands in EU external relations. It argues that that the FTA’s discursive commitments to ‘sustainability’ have opened the door for NGOs to demand stronger safeguard measures, while the more technical ‘good forest governance’ requirements in the VPA have contributed to its depoliticization.