On a visit to Vietnam from 20 to 24 February, a delegation of the subcommittee on human rights of the European Parliament, led by its chair, Pier Antonio Panzeri (S&D, Italy), expressed “serious concerns” regarding violations of social and political rights in the country, including freedom of expression and association, freedom of religion or belief and freedom of the press.
The members of this delegation, which included Soraya Post (S&D, Sweden), David Martin (S&D, UK), Lars Adaktusson (EPP, Sweden), Ádám Kósa (EPP, Hungary) and Beatriz Becerra Basterrechea (ALDE, Spain), said that they had been prevented from meeting prisoners of conscience and independent religious groups, bloggers, human rights defenders and independent civil society activists, who were “harassed and persecuted” to prevent them from meeting the MEPs.
The aim of this Parliament's mission was to assess the human rights situation in Vietnam and to raise this question in view of the prospective ratification by Parliament of the free-trade agreement (FTA) between the EU and Vietnam, which was concluded in December 2015 (see EUROPE 11444).
At a press conference in Hanoi on Wednesday 22 February, Panzeri warned the Vietnamese authorities that the repressions of freedom of expression, lack of transparency in the legal system and restrictions on human rights constituted serious obstacles to the ratification of the FTA.
“We need progress in human and social rights. But at this time, progress has not been made. We have told the Vietnamese authorities that it will be extremely difficult to approve [the trade agreement] under these circumstances”, Panzeri stressed.
“Given the strong opposition in Europe for this kind of free-trade agreement, we will have problems in getting it accepted unless we have a strong message from Vietnam and a clear, concrete roadmap to improve this situation”, Post said. (Original version in French by Emmanuel Hagry)