Our Newsletter #39 would lead you on the following:
LEGAL UPDATE
I. Unemployment insurance under Law on Employment 2025
On 16 June 2025, the National Assembly promulgated the Law on Employment No. 74/2025/QH15 (“Law on Employment 2025”), which will take effect from 01 January 2026. Accordingly, this Law introduces several notable changes that replace and supersede the provisions of the Law on Employment No. 38/2013/QH13 (“Law on Employment 2013”) as follows:
1. Adjustment and clarification of the participants of unemployment insurance (“UI”)
According to Article 31.1 of the Law on Employment 2025, the groups of participants in UI are adjusted as follows:
- Group 1 – Persons working under an indefinite-term labor contract or a fixed-term labor contract of one month or more, including cases where the employee and the employer agree under another contract title but with contents showing employment with payment of wages, salaries and under the management, administration, and supervision of one party;
- Group 2 – Employees under Group 1 who work part-time and receive monthly wages equal to or higher than the minimum salary used as the basis for compulsory social insurance contributions as prescribed by the Law on Social Insurance;
- Group 3 – Managers of enterprises, controllers, representatives of capital contributions in enterprises as prescribed by law; members of the Board of Directors, General Directors, Directors, members of the Supervisory Board or controllers, and other elected management positions of cooperatives and unions of cooperatives as prescribed by the Law on Cooperatives, who receive salaries.
2. The Law on Employment 2025 allows more flexibility in the UI payment rate compared to the Law on Employment 2013
According to Article 33.1 of the Law on Employment 2025, the UI payment rate for both employees and employers has been adjusted from a “fixed” rate to a “maximum” rate of 1%. This payment rate will be further specified by the Government, depending on the circumstances and each specific period of time.
3. The Law on Employment 2025 clarifies employers’ obligations regarding UI payments upon termination of labor contracts with employees
According to Article 33.7 of the Law on Employment 2025, this provision has an additional measure to protect employees as follows: Employers are responsible for fully paying UI payments for employees upon the termination of labor contracts, employment contracts, or working relationships to ensure the timely settlement of UI benefits for employees.
This clearer regulation under the Law on Employment 2025 strengthens the protection of employees’ rights in labor contract termination disputes.
4. Notes for companies providing employment services (Headhunter/Agency)
Although the Law on Employment 2025 does not introduce many new provisions for enterprises operating in employment service activities, it provides more detailed regulations compared to the Law on Employment 2013 as follows:
- Regarding facilities, personnel, and deposits, enterprises are required to maintain these conditions throughout their operation period.
- Regarding the establishment of branches, in addition to meeting the required conditions on facilities, enterprises must notify the employment-specialized agency under the People’s Committee of the province where their head office is located before carrying out employment service activities in order to be eligible to establish a branch.
- Regarding service fees, enterprises are entitled to set their own prices and must publicly post their service fees in accordance with the law.
II. The Law on Personal Data Protection 2025
On 26 June 2025, the National Assembly promulgated the Law on Personal Data Protection No. 91/2025/QH15 (“Law on PDP 2025”), which will take effect from 01 January 2026. The Law on PDP 2025 regulates the protection of personal data after nearly 03 years of implementation of Decree No. 13/2023/ND-CP (“Decree No. 13”) on personal data protection. Accordingly, the Law on PDP 2025 introduces several notable highlights, including the following:
1. The Law on PDP 2025 expands its scope of application compared to Decree No. 13
Pursuant to Article 1 of the Law on PDP 2025 on the scope of regulation and applicable entities, this Law expands its scope of application compared to Decree No. 13. Accordingly, persons of Vietnamese origin who have not yet determined their nationality but are residing in Vietnam and have been issued a personal identification certificate are now also covered under the Law on PDP 2025.
This new regulation ensures that the above-mentioned group of individuals is granted full rights and obligations under Article 4 of the Law on PDP 2025.
2. Activities under the Law on PDP 2025 and key notes
With the introduction of the Law on PDP 2025, this Law also regulates the protection of personal data in several specific activities and notes, as follows:
- Recruitment, management, and use of employees
- Organizations, agencies, and individuals involved in the recruitment and management of employees must comply with personal data protection obligations. Notably, employers are required to delete or destroy the information provided by job applicants if they are not recruited or employees in cases of termination of the labor contract, unless otherwise agreed with the applicant.
- Health information and insurance business activities
- In the health sector, organizations and individuals are prohibited from providing personal data to third parties, such as health care service providers or health and life insurance providers, unless requested in writing or as required by law.
- Insurance companies should also note that for reinsurance or retrocession activities involving the transfer of personal data to partners, such data transfer must be clearly stipulated in contracts with their clients.
- Financial, banking, and credit information activities
- In these information-sensitive sectors, organizations and individuals must strictly comply with the law. The Law on PDP 2025 expressly prohibits the use of personal credit information to assess credit scores, rankings, or creditworthiness of a data subject without their consent.
- Advertising service business
- For this activity, there are 02 key points that should be noted, including:
- The processing of customers’ personal data for advertising purposes must be based on the customers’ consent, ensuring that the customer is informed of the content, method, form, and frequency of product promotion, and is provided with a means to refuse to receive such advertisements.
- The use of personal data for advertising must comply with laws on spam messages, spam emails, spam calls, and relevant advertising regulations.
- For this activity, there are 02 key points that should be noted, including:
- Social media platforms and online communication services
- Service providers in these sectors must comply with the Law on PDP 2025, with the following key notes:
- Not to require users to provide images or videos containing all or part of their identity documents for account verification; and
- Not to eavesdrop, record, or read text messages or calls without the data subject’s consent, except as otherwise provided by law.
- Service providers in these sectors must comply with the Law on PDP 2025, with the following key notes:
In addition, the Law on PDP 2025 regulates data protection in: regarding children, persons who have lost or have limited civil act capacity, and persons with cognitive or behavioral difficulties; emerging activities such as big data processing, artificial intelligence, blockchain, metaverse, cloud computing; personal location data, biometric data; and public recording (audio/video) activities.
3. Notes for household businesses, micro-enterprises, small enterprises, and startups under the Law on PDP 2025
Regarding the following provisions: (i) Personal data processing impact assessment under Article 21 of the Law on PDP 2025; (ii) Updating the dossier of personal data processing impact assessment and cross-border personal data transfer impact assessment under Article 22; (iii) Responsibility to appoint qualified personnel or departments, or to engage service providers for personal data protection under Article 33.2 of Law on PDP 2025. The following subjects should take note:
- Small enterprises and startups may choose whether or not to comply with these requirements for a period of five years from 01 January 2026;
- Household businesses and micro-enterprises are exempted from compliance with these obligations.
Exception: Entities engaged in personal data processing services, or those that directly process sensitive personal data or handle personal data of a large number of data subjects, are required to comply with these provisions regardless of their business scale.
III. Vietnam’s digital technology industry
On 14 June 2025, the National Assembly promulgated Law No. 71/2025/QH15 on the digital technology industry (“Law on DTI 2025”), which takes effect from 01 January 2026 and introduces notable provisions on Vietnam’s digital technology industry, including:
1. Incentive policies for digital technology enterprises
The Law on DTI 2025 encourages enterprises to develop the digital technology industry through the following key incentive policies:
- Investment incentives: Sectors given special investment incentives are entitled to preferential treatment and support under the laws on investment, taxation, land, and other relevant regulations, including:
- Manufacturing digital technology products and providing digital technology services;
- Manufacturing and providing key digital technology products and services; producing software; developing artificial intelligence (“AI”) systems; conducting research and development, design, production, packaging, and testing of semiconductor chips; and investing in the construction of AI data centers;
- Start-up and innovation projects in the digital technology industry; and
- Investment activities in building digital technology industrial infrastructure.
- Direct financial support from the State budget: Digital technology projects and start-up innovation projects in this sector are entitled to financial support from local budgets to cover investment expenses for factory construction, technical infrastructure, and machinery and equipment; and
- Customs procedure incentives: Simplified customs procedures are applied to important and key projects. For example, enterprises are granted priority customs treatment when participating in the production of key digital technology products, semiconductor supply chains, and AI data centers.
2. Exploitation and use of digital data in the digital technology industry
Under the Law on DTI 2025, enterprises exploiting or using digital data must comply with the following requirements:
- Complying with laws on cybersecurity, cyberinformation safety, data protection, personal data, and other relevant legal provisions;
- Not imposing or creating commercial, technical, or other obstacles that prevent customers from storing digital data generated from the use of digital technology products or services, or from transferring such data to other organizations, enterprises, or individuals;
- Ensuring the quality of digital data in the digital technology industry, including accuracy, validity, integrity, completeness, timely updates, and consistency; and
- Being encouraged to self-assess and disclose the quality of digital data in their digital technology industry activities before launching digital technology products or services on the market.
3. Digital assets
To harness the vast economic potential of digital assets while ensuring transparency, security, and compliance with international standards, the Law on DTI 2025 introduces, for the first time, a legal definition and framework for digital assets. In particular:
- Digital assets are assets as defined under the Civil Code, represented in the form of digital data, created, issued, stored, transferred, and authenticated through digital technology in an electronic environment;
- Digital assets include: virtual assets in electronic environments used for exchange or investment purposes; encrypted assets used to authenticate other assets during their creation, issuance, storage, or transfer; and other types of encrypted assets according to the laws.
Of note, digital assets do not include securities, digital forms of legal tender, or other financial assets as provided under civil and financial laws.
The above is not official advice from BLawyers Vietnam. If you have any questions or suggestions about the above, please contact us at info@blawyersvn.com. We would love to hear from you.
Date: 29 October 2025
Writer: BLawyers Vietnam
Legal News and Update Team
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Maybe you are interested in reading other Newsletters of BLawyers Vietnam: Newsletter in June 2025/ Newsletter in July 2025/ Legal Newsletter in August 2025
