Situation of Law Making and Enforcement in Our Country in Recent Times

Thus, when introducing mandatory RIA regulations into the process of drafting legal documents, lawmakers not only want to improve quality, speed up the discussion and adoption of policies, but also establish a process to screen out unnecessary draft documents before submitting them to competent authorities for policy approval and improve the quality of draft documents through assessing compliance costs and policy objectives.

Based on the initial objectives when introducing the RIA regime into the policy and law making process, the researcher used it as a criterion to comprehensively re-evaluate the implementation of the RIA regime in the past 3 years to see the positive points as well as the limitations in the process of organizing and implementing the RIA regime, thereby finding solutions to perfect the institution to make the RIA regime increasingly professional in policy and law making activities in Vietnam.

Chapter 1 Conclusion

Based on the study of the experience of other countries in the legal impact assessment activities, we believe that when institutionalizing RIA regulations in the document drafting activities, Vietnam needs to pay attention to issues related to the timing of RIA implementation - it must be implemented early before the competent person makes a decision; the scope of policies subject to RIA impact assessment should be assessed according to the content of the policy, not in the form of documents as at present; regarding the issue of human resources, there needs to be a new mechanism and perspective in assigning and using staff to develop impact assessment reports, especially paying attention to using the expert mechanism. In addition, Vietnam also needs to study the experience of other countries related to the model of the agency controlling and assessing the quality of RIA reports as well as other measures to ensure that RIA is implemented in practice.

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Chapter 2

LAW AND PRACTICE OF IMPLEMENTATION OF REGULATIONS ON LEGAL IMPACT ASSESSMENT IN LAW-BUILDING ACTIVITIES IN VIETNAM

2.1. The situation of law making and enforcement in our country in recent times

The Law on Promulgation of Legal Documents passed by the 12th National Assembly of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, 3rd session, on June 3, 2008, effective from January 1, 2009, fundamentally amended the 1996 Law on Promulgation of Legal Documents (amended and supplemented in 2002) with the aim of "Continuing to innovate the process of developing and promulgating legal documents, in order to speed up the progress of drafting and promulgating documents, ensuring the quality of documents; enhancing the responsibility of advisory agencies in ensuring the quality of drafts, as well as document drafting techniques" [7] .

The Law on Promulgation of Legal Documents in 2008 institutionalized many innovative ideas and important legal policies, while "internalizing" a number of modern techniques in legislative activities, aiming to gradually perfect the legal system in the direction determined in Resolution No. 48-NQ/TW dated May 24, 2005 of the Politburo (9th tenure) on the Strategy for building and perfecting the legal system until 2010, with a vision to 2020 (referred to as Resolution No. 48-NQ/TW). Typical examples are the new regulations on streamlining the form and authority to promulgate legal documents of a number of entities belonging to central executive and judicial agencies; innovation in the process and requirements for planning a long-term and annual program for building legal documents; detailed regulations,

The implementation guidance must be issued to take effect at the same time as the document or article, clause, or point that is specified in detail; apply the technique of one document amending many documents; develop and promulgate legal documents according to shortened procedures; consolidate legal documents and codify the legal system.... Among the new provisions of the Law on Promulgation of Legal Documents 2008, the regulation on assessing the legal impact of documents is an important reform regulation. These regulations aim to break through the weakest stages in the legislative process that have been implemented in recent years. These are the stages of determining needs, formulating and interpreting policies when proposing to develop laws and ordinances, and the stage of selecting reasonable and effective solutions when drafting documents to implement the identified policies; the disconnect between law making and law enforcement. Accordingly, the drafting agency must develop a preliminary RIA for the

proposed construction

g legal documents are

put into the program

build laws, ordinances, annual and term-long National Assembly Program...

The preparation of RIA reports during the drafting process must be carried out before drafting legal documents. After 3 years of implementation, it is necessary to assess the actual impact of legal documents to verify the forecasted impact of policies and documents during the drafting process. With these regulations, RIA is expected to be an effective tool and method to improve the quality of policy making, increase prudence, effectiveness and accountability for legal solutions selected to bring these policies into life.

After 2 years of implementing the Law on Promulgation of Legal Documents 2008, in 2010, the Government's Report on the 5-year implementation of Resolution 48-NQ/TW initially recorded the results achieved from introducing RIA into the policy and law making process. Accordingly, the Report affirmed that the Law on Promulgation of Legal Documents 2008 had achieved positive results.

The promulgation of legal documents in 2008 has created a legal basis for a fairly fundamental innovation in the way the National Assembly and the Government make programs and plans for law-making, such as overcoming the administrative and formal nature of the proposal and registration activities in the law-making program (law projects included in the program must clearly demonstrate policies, make preliminary forecasts of socio-economic impacts to ensure the feasibility of the proposal, clearly define the roadmap for promulgation, the drafting agency and the conditions to ensure...). The promulgation process has had many important innovations in the direction of transparency, strictness, democracy, mobilizing the maximum intelligence of the whole society in legislative and regulatory activities, better ensuring the feasibility of documents through assessing the socio-economic impacts of documents right from the time of proposing the initiative and during the drafting process;... At the same time, the Report also identified limitations and shortcomings in the law enforcement process, namely: the points of reform and innovation in the procedures for developing and promulgating legal documents such as assessing the impact of documents, attracting the participation of the people, mobilizing the intelligence of experts and scientists... have not yet fully taken effect in practice. The implementation of regulations on RIA impact assessment has not been implemented by ministries and branches or is mostly implemented in a formal, coping manner; there is a lack of thorough scientific and practical arguments, a lack of clear and scientifically accurate documents and data to prove the necessity and rationality of the legal policies of a draft law that has been included in the program, drafted and passed. “In addition, based on the results of independent research on RIA implementation, some experts also commented that, except for some RIA reports that were performed relatively well, the majority were still done in a formal, perfunctory manner, not in accordance with legal requirements” [42].

The goal of RIA regulation when included in the law-making process has almost not been achieved in the past. This field shows the situation of construction and implementation.

law in our country in the past. Our country's legal system is still very complicated, cumbersome, multi-layered, with many entities issuing many types of legal documents. "There are still many legal documents that are contradictory, overlapping, even contrary to documents of higher-level state agencies, outdated regulations have not been promptly detected and eliminated, or there are areas that need to be adjusted but there are no regulations" [42] . The number of legal documents issued is increasing. In some legal fields, the number of documents detailing and guiding the law is very large, and has not yet been fully counted.

According to Government data, in 2010 alone, the Government issued 122 decrees. According to statistics from the Law Database of the Office of the National Assembly, as of February 2009, the total number of legal documents

The number of legal documents still in force is 19,095. Within 5 years (2005-2009), Vietnam issued 20,569 legal documents, larger than the number of 14,641 legal documents issued in the previous 18 years (1987-2004). According to Report No. 135/BC-CP dated October 1, 2010 of the Government, from May 1, 2005 to October 2010, the National Assembly and the National Assembly Standing Committee issued 125 Laws and Ordinances; the Government issued 769 Decrees and the Ministries and Branches issued 1,769 Circulars and 461 Joint Circulars. Accordingly, on average, each Law and Ordinance has 6-7 Decrees and 20 Circulars and Joint Circulars [8] .

The existence of such a large number of legal documents has caused many difficulties in accessing and looking up. Moreover, these documents are not regularly reviewed and systematized comprehensively, so they are difficult to access, difficult to understand, difficult to use, causing difficulties for both state agencies and people. Based on these figures, we can see that the goal of reducing

The number of documents when introducing RIA into our current law-making process has not been achieved. If the number of documents is not reduced, the goals such as cutting costs, especially compliance costs for other subjects will not be reduced, and in some cases, it will increase costs for other subjects in society.

Regarding the issue of the quality of our country's documents in recent times, it has not improved and even decreased in response to the requirements of the practical situation. This is reflected in the rankings of Vietnam's business environment and competitiveness, which have continuously decreased in the past two years. "In the World Bank's report on Vietnam's business environment, it dropped 21 places from 78th in 2010 to 99th in 2012. The World Economic Forum's Global Competitiveness Report dropped 16 places from 59th in 2010 to 75th in 2012." [14]

This was further affirmed in the overall assessment after 4 years of implementing the Law on Promulgation of Legal Documents 2008 when the RIA regime was included in the law-making process and was specified in Report No. 135/BC-CP dated October 1, 2010 of the Government summarizing the implementation of Plan 900/UBTVQH11 of the National Assembly Standing Committee to implement Resolution 48-NQ/TW of the Politburo on the Strategy for building and perfecting the legal system until 2010, with a vision to 2020.

The report frankly pointed out the shortcomings and inadequacies of our country's legal system in the past time, such as the low consistency of the legal system; the low stability of the legal system, affecting the stability of social relations; the limited transparency of the legal system, not implementing legal interpretation. The limited transparency of the legal system. Regarding the implementation of legal impact assessment

The report also pointed out that “ the assessment of socio-economic impacts before promulgating laws has not been given due attention... the determination of a legal document that needs to be amended or supplemented in many cases is still subjective, based on individual reflections from a few subjects or a small group of individuals without conducting a full assessment, especially an objective and scientific assessment of the socio-economic impacts of that document itself.” [8]

Thus, in addition to the results achieved from the innovation of the legal document drafting process in the Law on Promulgation of Legal Documents 2008, we must also look back at the current situation regarding compliance with regulations and the quality of policies issued in the past. From the current situation of law drafting and enforcement in the past, it can be seen that the introduction of the RIA regime into the document drafting process in our country in the past still has many limitations in terms of both institutions and its implementation in practice.

2.2. Current status of laws regulating legal impact assessment

2.2.1. Legal framework governing legal impact assessment

The RIA legal impact assessment tool has been used since 1974 in OECD countries and it has been continuously improved and expanded. This activity was officially introduced to Vietnam in 2008 when we integrated this provision into the order and procedures for developing and promulgating legal documents. According to the provisions of the Law on Promulgation of Legal Documents 2008, the impact assessment of documents is carried out in 3 stages: (1) The stage of proposing the development of laws, ordinances and decrees (Clause 1, Article 23 and Clause 1, Article 59 of the Law on Promulgation of Legal Documents 2008), (2) The stage of drafting laws, ordinances and decrees (Clause 2, Article 33 and Clause 2, Article 61 of the Law on Promulgation of Legal Documents 2008).

2008) and (3) The period after 3 years of implementing the document from the date the document takes legal effect (Article 39 of Decree No. 24/2009/ND-CP dated March 5, 2009 of the Government detailing and providing measures for implementing the Law on Promulgation of Legal Documents (hereinafter referred to as Decree 24/2009/ND-CP)).

- At the stage of proposing the development of Laws, Ordinances and Decrees. According to the requirements of the Law on Promulgation of Legal Documents 2008, the presiding agency

Drafters must develop a preliminary RIA for proposals to develop regulatory documents.

illegal

included in the Construction Program

g law, ordinance, goods

years and terms of the National Assembly.

- At the stage of drafting legal documents. In order to provide more information to competent authorities as well as relevant subjects in reviewing, discussing and approving documents, and at the same time, to enhance the responsibility of the drafting agency or organization to ensure the quality of the draft, the Law on Promulgation of Legal Documents 2008 stipulates that the agency or organization in charge of drafting laws and ordinances is responsible for organizing impact assessment and developing a document impact assessment report (RIA). The content of the report must clearly state the issues that need to be resolved and the solutions for each issue; the costs and benefits of the solutions, and compare the costs and benefits of the solutions (Clause 2, Article 33); the task of the agency or organization in charge of drafting the decree is to develop a document impact assessment report (Clause 2, Article 61).

In particular, the appraisal dossier, the dossier submitted to the Government and the dossier submitted to the National Assembly and the National Assembly Standing Committee have a mandatory document, which is the impact assessment report of the draft document (Point c, Clause 2, Article 36 of the Law on Promulgation of Legal Documents 2008).

- The period after 3 years of implementing the document from the date the document takes legal effect. This is an impact assessment activity after the policy has been issued.

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