On the Shoulder of Giants -Vietnam’s Emerging Personal Data Protection Framework and the GDPR

A robust legal framework for personal data protection is crucial to safeguard individual privacy, prevent misuse of personal information, and foster trust in digital systems. The European Union’s influence on global data protection is highly significant, as its stringent standards have set a global benchmark, prompting other countries, including Vietnam, to adopt similar frameworks to ensure compliance and facilitate international data exchanges. This article examines the development of the legal framework on personal data protection in Vietnam. It highlights the key drivers that prompted Vietnam’s adoption of new personal data protection legislation. These include Vietnam’s obligations under international trade agreements and human rights treaties, fragmented laws, the prevalence of data breaches and privacy violations, and the growing clout of the European Union’s data protection paradigm. Consequently, in 2023 the Vietnamese Government introduced a normative document with various provisions mirroring those of the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation, expressly demonstrating foreign footprint on its law. This article suggests that the adoption of this normative document represents a game-changer in Vietnam’s legal approach to personal data protection, moving from a sectorized to an omnibus model. Despite certain inadequacies, a new personal data protection regime has gradually emerged in Vietnam.