Corporate Accountability for Labor Data Protection in Eu-Asia Ftas: A Comparative Analysis of TSD Chapters and National Compliance in Asean

As the European Union continues to 'export' its high social and environmental standards through the Trade and Sustainable Development (TSD) chapters in new-generation FTAs like the EVFTA, EUSFTA, EU-Thailand FTA, a new regulatory frontier has emerged in Asia: corporate accountability for employee data. While traditional labor disputes focused on wages and working hours, the rapid 'platformization' of the Asian labor market has shifted the focus toward algorithmic management and data privacy. This research examines corporate accountability for labor-data protection as an emerging issue of sustainable trade governance in EU-Asia economic relations. It argues that, although Trade and Sustainable Development (TSD) chapters in the European Union’s new-generation free trade agreements do not expressly regulate labor data, they nonetheless reshape the normative structure of trade by embedding labor protection, non-regression, monitoring, and participatory implementation mechanisms within market integration. Read together with the Brussels Effect, these treaty-based dynamics generate indirect but durable pressures for legal adaptation in ASEAN. Using a functional comparative approach, the article analyses Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia, and Vietnam in order to evaluate how trade-linked and market-driven accountability pressures are translated into domestic personal data protection regimes. The study highlights the Asian approach to balancing economic growth with the protection of fundamental digital rights in labor relations.