ASEAN Law Colloquium
Localizing the Brussels Effect: Vietnam’s 2025 Personal Data Protection Law between Global Standards and Social Values
Date & Time: October 20, 2026 (Tuesday) 18:30-19:30
Venue: Room 901, 9/F Cheng Yu Tung Tower, The University of Hong Kong
Language: English
(In-person Event)
Registration Link:
https://hkuems1.hku.hk/hkuems/ec_regform.aspx?guest=Y&UEID=109696
Abstract:
Vietnam’s 2025 Personal Data Protection Law marks the most significant turn in the country’s data governance to date. For much of the past decade, Vietnam approached personal data primarily through the lens of national security, most visibly in the data localization requirements of its 2018 Cybersecurity Law. The new Law signals a shift toward a more open and integration-oriented model, shaped by trade commitments, the ambitions of the digital economy, and a continuing concern for sovereignty in cyberspace.
This talk examines how Vietnam has sought to reconcile global data protection standards with its own social and public values. It first explains how the principles of the EU General Data Protection Regulation have reached Vietnam through market and trade pressures rather than formal harmonization, a phenomenon often described as the Brussels Effect. It then explores where these principles have been adapted rather than simply transplanted: a lighter, oversight-based approach to cross-border data transfers, and, most distinctively, the recognition of obligations of data subjects alongside their rights. Rooted in the Vietnamese constitutional understanding of rights as inseparable from social responsibility, this choice departs from the individualist premise of the GDPR, yet may be better read as a deliberate adaptation to a rapidly digitalizing society than as a retreat from international standards.
The talk closes by briefly touching on the Law’s treatment of AI systems processing personal data, and by reflecting on what Vietnam’s experience may offer to the wider conversation on data protection in ASEAN.
Speaker:
Le Tran Quoc Cong is a lecturer in the Faculty of International Law at Ho Chi Minh City University of Law, Vietnam, where he teaches international trade law, international commercial arbitration and business law in the digital economy. He holds an LLM in International and Comparative Business Law from the University of Bordeaux and is a PhD candidate in International Law at Ho Chi Minh City University of Law. He was a research fellow at the Centre of Comparative, European and International Law (CDCEI), University of Lausanne, under the EU-funded Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Staff Exchange programme. His research focuses on personal data protection, AI governance and technology law, with particular attention to Vietnam and ASEAN. His recent work appears in the TalTech Journal of European Studies and the Vietnamese Journal of Legal Sciences. He also serves as an arbitrator at the Southern Commercial Arbitration Centre (STAC).
Chair:
Professor Trevor T. W. Wan, Assistant Professor, Faculty of Law, The University of Hong Kong
This is an in-person event. Prior registration is required. Please click here to register. For inquiries, please email Louisa at .