Vietnamese Law on Abolition of Child Labor in the Impact of the Free Trade Agreement between the European Union and Vietnam

As one of the EU's leading investment and trade partners in ASEAN and the Asia-Pacific region, on June 30, 2019, Vietnam officially signed the Free Trade Agreement between Vietnam and the European Union (EVFTA). The signing of the EVFTA marked an important milestone in the three-decade process of cooperation and development between Vietnam and the European Union. Notably, the EVFTA is a new-generation free trade agreement, containing provisions on labor standards of the International Labor Organization, including a commitment to effectively abolish child labor. The Vietnamese National Assembly ratified the EVFTA on June 8, 2020 and it officially took effect from August 1, 2020. Implementing the commitment to effectively eliminate child labor within the framework of EVFTA, Vietnam has issued and amended many tools, policies and laws to fully and effectively implement this commitment in the agreement. This article analyzes and clarifies Vietnamese legal regulations on the abolition of child labor; from there, compares the level of conformity between Vietnamese law and the regulations on this issue in EVFTA. JEL Codes: F13, J88, K3. Keywords: commitment to abolish child labor; EVFTA; new generation free trade agreement; Vietnamese law