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| Dr. Nguyen Si Dung believes that we need to create a strategic institutional breakthrough. (Source: VGP) |
Recently, on July 13, Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh signed and issued Official Dispatch 644/CD-TTg requesting ministries, branches and localities to rectify, strengthen responsibility and improve the effectiveness of administrative procedure reform, promptly remove obstacles and difficulties for people and businesses.
The telegram has very specifically pointed out the tasks that ministries, branches and localities must focus on handling related to cutting administrative procedures:
That is, strictly assess the impact of administrative procedures; Only maintain and issue procedures that are truly necessary and have low compliance costs; Periodically compile monthly statistics on newly issued administrative procedures to promptly amend or abolish them. At the same time, strictly control the issuance and implementation of administrative procedures.
The core of the Official Dispatch 644/CD-TTg is deregulation: cutting down on procedures; resolutely not issuing new procedures if not really necessary. This should be considered the most important direction to create institutional breakthroughs as proposed by the 13th Party Congress. Of course, decentralization should be proposed not only for procedural laws, but also for substantive laws.
Laws regulate behavior. The more laws, the more regulated behaviors. Abuse of regulation is a very big problem in our country today. We don't know since when, but we have believed that to build a rule of law state, there must be full laws.
With such a concept, for a long time, we have tried to plan the law-making activities and considered the promulgation of many legal documents as an achievement. Moreover, whenever we face any problem in life, we immediately think that it is necessary to promulgate laws to handle it. As a result, the abuse of regulation has occurred.
Social life as well as public administration have been regulated by too many legal norms. Reasonable or unreasonable, these norms can turn into “shackles” that bind our “limbs” as well as the country’s potential.
Just think, when the demand for economic recovery is becoming increasingly hot, but for years we still cannot approve public investment projects, have we become "hostages" of confusing and overlapping legal regulations?
Moreover, there is a situation where no one among the cadres and civil servants dares to respond decisively or to push ahead with the work. Because, if they do not do it, it is okay, but if they do, they will definitely violate the law. Recently, the Politburo had to issue Conclusion 14 to protect the dynamic, creative cadres who dare to think and dare to do, perhaps also to deal with the negative consequences of the abuse of regulation.
The more regulation is abused, the higher the costs of compliance, the costs of enforcing compliance, and the costs of enforcement.
According to a former Minister of Justice, these costs could amount to around 28% of GDP. Just to implement the Planning Law, we can see that the costs incurred are extremely large.
Up to now, more than 4 years after the Law was promulgated, a lot of money and effort have been spent, but many legislative policies proposed in the Law have not been implemented. The cost of the law can have a very negative impact on people's livelihood, economic growth and the strength of the country.
To overcome the consequences of regulatory abuse, in the past few terms, the Government has had to find ways to cut down on administrative procedures and licenses. However, the paradox lies in the fact that: On the one hand, the Government tries to cut down on administrative procedures and licenses to improve the business environment. On the other hand, the National Assembly plans and promotes the drafting and promulgation of laws. Procedures and licenses arising from old laws have not been cut down yet, but procedures and licenses arising from new laws have increased.
Perhaps, there needs to be a clearer definition of the legislative power and legislative function of the National Assembly. The legislative power of the National Assembly is the power to examine and pass laws, not the power to make laws.
In essence, it is the power to control the enactment of laws. As an institution representing the people, the National Assembly was born to control the enactment of laws to protect the freedoms of the people.
From the above analysis, to solve the problem of regulatory abuse, the most important thing is to innovate our legislative thinking.
First of all, we must recognize the importance of freedom and clarify the mission of the institutions involved in the legislative process. The government is the agency that promotes the enactment of laws. The National Assembly is the agency that controls the enactment of laws.
Second, the balance between freedom and regulation is most important for a legal system that is in line with the standards of a rule of law state. Freedom is necessary for innovation and development. But the absolute freedom can lead to anarchy and instability. Regulation helps ensure order and stability, but over-regulation can be costly.
Therefore, wisdom lies in the ability to balance freedom and regulation. This is a dynamic balance. We need to build institutional capacity, including institutions and processes, to ensure this balance.
Third, deregulation must be the focus of efforts to improve our country’s legal system in the coming time. We need to continue to cut down on administrative procedures, licenses, and legal regulations that generate unnecessary costs.
The most reasonable approach here is that when we recognize the bottlenecks caused by the law, we need to quickly amend the document to immediately abolish unreasonable regulations. This is also the behavior in the spirit of Official Dispatch 644/CD-TTg of Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh.
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