One of the four important Law projects that will be discussed and approved by the 9th Extraordinary Session of the 15th National Assembly, which opened on February 12, is the Law on Promulgation of Legal Normative Documents, a Law project that is considered to be of special importance, affecting the construction and completion of the entire legal system. Dai Doan Ket Newspaper reporter interviewed Deputy Minister of Justice Nguyen Thanh Tinh about this Law project.
Reporter: Deputy Minister, the draft Law on Promulgation of Legal Documents (amended) is considered a particularly important project, affecting the development and completion of the entire legal system. Could you please tell us about the Ministry of Justice's policies and viewpoints on the development of the draft Law and its implementation process?
Deputy Minister Nguyen Thanh Tinh : The Law on Promulgation of Legal Documents (amended) is a particularly important law project because it affects the construction and completion of the entire legal system, is a "law making law", a comprehensive solution to innovate the thinking of law making, in order to effectively implement one of the three strategic breakthroughs in the spirit of the 13th National Party Congress.
Implementing the direction of General Secretary To Lam at the Opening Session of the 8th Session of the 15th National Assembly and the conclusion of the General Secretary at the working session with the Party Committee of the Ministry of Justice, the direction of the National Assembly Chairman and the Prime Minister on innovating the thinking of law-making, promoting the building and perfecting of institutions, meeting the requirements of national development in the "new era, the era of strong and prosperous development of the nation", which sets out the task of urgently amending the Law on Promulgation of Legal Documents.
On January 3, 2025, the Politburo gave its opinion on the Project on innovation and improvement of the law-making process to ensure professionalism, science, timeliness, feasibility and efficiency submitted by the Party Delegation of the National Assembly. On January 6, 2025, the Central Party Office issued Official Dispatch No. 12918-CV/VPTW on innovation and improvement of the law-making process to ensure professionalism, science, timeliness, feasibility and efficiency. On January 20, 2025, the Politburo issued Conclusion No. 119-KL/TW on the orientation for innovation and improvement of the law-making process, which clearly stated 07 contents that need to be institutionalized in the process of developing the Law on Promulgation of Legal Normative Documents (amended):
Firstly, ensure the comprehensive and direct leadership of the Party in law-making work; clearly identify the leadership of institution-building and law-improvement work as a key and regular task of Party committees and organizations at all levels; strictly implement Regulation No. 178-QD/TW dated June 27, 2024 of the Politburo.
Second, strongly innovate the thinking of law making.
Third, continue to simplify the legal system, clearly distinguishing legislative and regulatory authority.
Fourth, strongly innovate the construction of the National Assembly's legislative program in the direction of having both a long-term strategy and orientation, and a flexible annual program that closely follows real life.
Fifth, continue to innovate and improve the process of drafting and promulgating legal documents to ensure democracy, professionalism, science, timeliness, feasibility, efficiency, transparency, accessibility, ease of application in practice, saving time and costs, speeding up progress, improving the quality of law-making, and promptly meeting practical requirements.
Sixth, continue to promote the role of the Vietnam Fatherland Front, socio-political organizations and people in proactively and actively participating in law-making; perfect the mechanism for social criticism, explanation and reception of opinions on draft legal documents.
Seventh, develop human resources for law-making with political will, steadfastness, good moral qualities, and professional proficiency. Pay attention to allocating sufficient resources, having financial mechanisms and specific policies and regimes for the work and cadres doing legal work and law-making, identifying investment in law-making as investment in development; promote digital transformation, and apply artificial intelligence (AI) in law-making.
Regarding the implementation process, the Ministry of Justice has focused all resources on researching and developing the draft Law on Promulgation of Legal Documents (amended). Although the National Assembly Standing Committee allowed the drafting according to shortened procedures, to ensure the quality of the draft Law, the Government has directed the Ministry of Justice to proactively implement all steps according to the provisions of the current Law.
Currently, the draft Law is structured with 08 chapters and 72 articles (9 chapters and 101 articles less than the Law on Promulgation of Legal Documents in 2015), including very fundamental innovations, with "breakthrough" contents in the law-making process. The Law is more concise but the quality must be better, this is a requirement throughout the process of developing this draft.
Dear Deputy Minister, current practice shows that the promulgation of legal documents has a certain "delay" compared to the development of practice, which leads to the situation where many new problems arise in practice but there is no law to regulate them. How is this problem resolved in the draft Law on Promulgation of Legal Documents (amended)?
Deputy Minister Nguyen Thanh Tinh : To overcome the problem of "delay" in promulgating legal documents with practical requirements and demands, the draft Law has proposed 2 groups of solutions, specifically as follows:
Firstly, fundamentally innovate the process of formulating a law-making program to ensure flexibility and timely policy response, specifically: Separate the policy-making process from the annual legislative program to assign the Government or the submitting agency to be responsible for researching and approving policies as a basis for legalizing legal documents before submitting them to the National Assembly, and the National Assembly assigns the National Assembly Standing Committee to decide on the annual legislative program according to the principle of only including in the program projects whose quality is guaranteed by the Government or the submitting agency;
Second, regarding the process of passing legal documents, the draft Law stipulates the process of passing laws in one session. At the same time, it clearly stipulates, simplifies the process, shortens the procedure and supplements the process of passing documents in special cases for projects and draft documents dealing with urgent and important national situations after receiving comments from the Politburo to promptly resolve issues arising related to national and ethnic interests.
Dear Deputy Minister, currently, the organization of law enforcement is still considered a "weak link", not meeting the practical requirements of building and perfecting the socialist rule of law state. How is this issue handled when drafting the Law on Promulgation of Legal Documents (amended)?
Deputy Minister Nguyen Thanh Tinh : In Conclusion No. 01-KL/TW of the 11th Politburo, it is stated that the organization of law enforcement is still a "weak link", not promptly meeting the practical requirements of the cause of building and perfecting the socialist rule of law state, which is not consistent with the goal of promulgating the law. Currently, the draft Law stipulates a completely new chapter, which is the chapter on Organization of the implementation of legal documents. The draft Law stipulates a close connection between the work of law making and law enforcement. Establish a mechanism to regularly evaluate the effectiveness of the implementation of legal documents after promulgation to promptly identify and effectively handle conflicts, overlaps, inadequacies, and "bottlenecks" caused by legal provisions; At the same time, it stipulates the responsibilities of state agencies, organizations and competent persons within the scope of their functions, tasks and powers to organize implementation and report or provide information on implementation according to the provisions of law.
In addition, recent practice has shown that in the process of organizing the implementation of legal documents, many provisions in sub-law documents have different interpretations, and it is necessary to have guidance from competent authorities to ensure uniform application. I believe that with regulations on guidance on the application of legal documents such as the draft Law, it will help to quickly handle practical issues and not incur costs and human resources to amend and supplement legal documents.
Dear Deputy Minister, the provision on "policy consultation" in the draft Law is a content that many people are interested in. Could you please share more clearly the provision on policy consultation in the draft Law?
Deputy Minister Nguyen Thanh Tinh : Policy consultation is a new issue stipulated in the draft Law. The drafting committee has studied solutions to promote the quality of law-making work, in which "policy must be policy", policy must be in line with the people's wishes, if the policy is correct, "on target", then the policy can be codified into a law, into a legal document with quality. Therefore, in this draft Law, there is a provision on policy consultation.
The drafting committee has accepted the opinions of the National Assembly Standing Committee in the 42nd Session on February 5, 2025, accordingly, the policy consultation process in the draft Law shows that: first, that policy making is not allowed to be closed; second, determining the responsibility of policy makers must be more thorough, respecting objective factors more; third, respecting the subjects, the objects that have an impact, the relevant agencies that have a lot of information, are responsible for the policy issue, to collect information, share information, unify viewpoints, from which there will be awareness to point out what is the optimal solution to solve policy goals.
Policy consultation is a very common practice in many countries, but in Vietnam, this issue has only recently been officially regulated in the draft Law. I think this is a new, very practical regulation that demonstrates superiority and requires the efforts and determination of policy research agencies in the upcoming implementation. From there, policies will truly become popular solutions, consistent with development goals, creating consensus and facilitating the attraction of all resources among the people and the business community. The promulgated legal regulations will be consistent with the "Party's will and the people's will" and promote adjustment in social life.
Thank you very much, Deputy Minister!
Source: https://daidoanket.vn/du-an-luat-ban-hanh-van-ban-quy-pham-phap-luat-sua-doi-giai-phap-doi-moi-tu-duy-xay-dung-phap-luat-trong-ky-nguyen-moi-10299718.html
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