Thanh Nien Newspaper has just published a series of articles on overlapping and problematic laws , pointing out the shortcomings in the system of legal documents (LDOs) that cause difficulties for people, businesses and enforcement officers.

Mr. Ho Quang Huy, Director of the Department of Inspection of Legal Documents (Ministry of Justice), said that the inadequacies and overlaps of the law come from both sides: the documents themselves have inadequacies and the team applying the documents sometimes do not agree on the understanding.

There are shortcomings, but also due to understanding.

Reporter: At the 5th session of the 15th tenure, the National Assembly issued Resolution 101/2023 requesting a review of the legal document system. At the 6th session after that, the National Assembly issued Resolution 110/2023 requesting the handling of the results after the review and continuing to review arising issues. So far, what results have been achieved in the review and post-review remedies, sir?

Director Ho Quang Huy: The recent Government meeting with localities gave opinions on the draft results of the review of the legal document system. Compared to the review under Resolution 101, in the second review under Resolution 110, the number of problems and conflicts has significantly decreased.

The most encouraging thing is that ministries and branches have started to amend and supplement the regulations that were pointed out in the first review. Up to now, based on the efforts of ministries and branches, the working group has compiled and processed 53/214 recommendations, focusing on very important areas such as land, real estate business, housing, management and use of public assets, etc.

The changes have contributed to removing institutional obstacles, improving the investment environment, cutting administrative procedures, promoting production and business activities, and protecting the legitimate rights and interests of organizations and individuals.

The process of promulgating a legal document cannot be "skipped" but must ensure the correct steps according to the provisions of the Law on Promulgation of Legal Documents. However, in such a short time, a lot of content has been resolved. This is one of the biggest results, and also the final destination of the review.

After two reviews, how do you evaluate the legal document system of Vietnam? Is the number of documents with inappropriate and overlapping content that have been pointed out the cause of difficulties for people, businesses and enforcement officers, even leading to the story of "avoiding and fearing responsibility"?

- The initial identification of such inconsistencies and contradictions shows that Vietnam's legal system is basically consistent and has no loopholes. The inconsistencies are mainly due to changes in practice that have not kept up and must continue to be adjusted and improved.

Not to mention, when approaching the system of documents for review, we found that the number of documents that needed to be reviewed was very large. But when we started to classify and determine whether this content was really contradictory, inadequate, or overlapping, we realized that there were problems due to understanding and implementation, not due to the problem with the regulations themselves.

Therefore, through this review, in addition to the content that is indeed contradictory and overlapping and needs to be focused on to be resolved for completion, it is also an opportunity for ministries and branches to sit together to unify the understanding, thereby providing guidance on how to apply it in accordance with legal regulations because the approach is not complete, accurate, not comprehensive and the nature of the problem lies in the awareness and implementation of regulations.

We met with ministries and branches and agreed on the following points of view: any issues under the law should be reported to the National Assembly, any issues under the decree should be reported to the Government and the Prime Minister, any issues under the authority and responsibility of ministries and branches should be handled by ministries and branches according to their assigned authority according to regulations. Then, we will compile a general report to report to the National Assembly for comments and continue to monitor implementation.

"As difficult as prescribed", why?

For a long time, there has been a story of "difficult as prescribed". That is, people or businesses encountering difficulties have to ask for opinions from competent authorities, but those authorities respond by quoting articles and clauses of the law and saying "implement according to legal regulations". According to regulations, of course it must be followed, but as mentioned, there are regulations that are very difficult to implement in practice?

- In fact, there are such stories. There are regulations that lead to different interpretations or shirking of responsibility between competent state agencies, making it very difficult for people and businesses.

However, I think that the review process has pointed out contradictions, overlaps, and inadequacies in the regulations. In addition, we have also identified areas and issues that people and businesses have difficulty accessing and applying legal regulations. From there, ministries and branches have the opportunity to determine what needs to be guided, how people and businesses can easily access the viewpoints, methods, and contents expressed in legal regulations.

In the recommendations of the working group sent to ministries and branches, for problems and shortcomings due to inconsistent understanding, it is requested that ministries have methods and plans to guide, how to unify understanding, how to quickly put the law into practice. That is also the goal set out in the review process.

In your opinion, what is the solution to improve the quality of legal document development, so that there is no need for general reviews anymore? Any legal document needs to be transparent, not have hidden interests, and cannot have many interpretations in the style of "anything is right"?

- To reduce the volume of periodic, interdisciplinary reviews, we need to pay more attention and invest more to improve the quality of legal document development, from the policy proposal stage to the drafting stage to standardize the approved policies on the basis of closely following the provisions of the law on promulgation of legal documents for proactive, complete, and substantial implementation.

Second, we must regularly review. The Law on Promulgation of Legal Documents clearly stipulates that ministers and heads of sectors must be responsible for reviewing documents in their respective fields.

It is not advisable to wait a long time to conduct a review. As soon as there is a basis for review, the document must be reviewed immediately. That is, it is necessary to consider the review as a regular task, belonging to the responsibility of each ministry and branch to promptly detect and handle conflicts, inadequacies and problems.

If the above tasks are done well, with such an approach, I believe that it will not only reduce the workload, but also help improve the quality of document review activities, thereby eliminating the need for large-scale, batch-by-batch document reviews as is currently the case.

Thank you!