On July 2, 2021, police in Vietnam arrested lawyer Đặng Đình Bách, director of the non-profit Law & Policy of Sustainable Development (LPSD), which is a member of the Vietnam Environmental Network (VEN), Vietnam Sustainable Energy Alliance (VSEA), and the Vietnam Non-Communicable Diseases Prevention and Control Alliance (NCDs-VN), and the journalist Mai Phan Lợi. The human rights defenders were both executive board members of VNGO-EVFTA Network, established last November 2020 to satisfy the formation of the Domestic Advisory Group (DAG), a civil society component of the EU-VN Free Trade Agreement (EVFTA). DAGs allow independent observers such as CSOs to monitor the implementation of the EVFTA, especially in areas such as workers’ rights, land rights, and the environment. The arrest is alleged to be a move to exclude civil society participation to TA negotiations. On 24 January 2022, the environmental advocate Đặng Đình Bách was sentenced to prison for five years under tax evasion charges according to article 200 of Vietnam’s 2015 Penal Code.

In 2019, human rights defender and journalist Phan Chí Dũng was also arrested in connection to his opposition to the EU-Vietnam free trade agreement and his exposure of corruption.