Resolution No. 66-NQ/TW dated April 30, 2025 on regarding innovating law-making and law enforcement in response to the Vietnam's development demands in the new era

RESOLUTION

OF THE POLITBURO
REGARDING INNOVATING LAW-MAKING AND LAW ENFORCEMENT IN RESPONSE TO THE VIETNAM'S DEVELOPMENT DEMANDS IN THE NEW ERA

In recent years, the Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV) and the State have introduced numerous guidelines and policies aimed at innovating and enhancing the effectiveness of law-making and law enforcement, yielding significant achievements. The theoretical understanding of the socialist rule-of-law State has been continuously refined. Vietnam has developed a legal system that is relatively uniform, public, transparent, accessible, and fundamentally regulates all aspects of social life, thereby providing a legal foundation for socio-economic development, ensuring national defense, security, and international integration. However, there remain various shortcomings and inadequacies in law-making and law enforcement. Certain CPV's guidelines and orientations have not been promptly or fully institutionalized. The law-making mindset in some sectors is still management-centric. The quality of laws has yet to meet practical requirements. Some regulations are overlapping, conflicting, or unclear, hindering enforcement thereof and creating barriers to promotion of innovation, attraction, and unlocking of investment resources. The decentralization of power remains insufficient; administrative procedures are still cumbersome. Law enforcement continues to be a weak link; mechanisms for timely and effective policy response are lacking. There has been a delay in researching and promulgating policies and laws to address emerging issues, and the regulatory framework remains inadequate for fostering new growth drivers.

In the context of epochal global changes, in order for Vietnam to advance firmly into the new era - an era of breakthrough development toward prosperity and strength under the CPV’s leadership - along with restructuring of the organizational apparatus and striving for reaching the "double-digit" economic growth rate, the law-making and law enforcement must undergo fundamental innovation to create strong momentum for rapid and sustainable development of Vietnam. On the basis this context, the Politburo requests that the following directives must be effectively implemented:

I- GUIDING PRINCIPLES

1. Ensure the CPV's comprehensive and direct leadership in law-making, and enhance the CPV's leadership over law enforcement. Increase power control; prevention and combat against corruption, wastefulness, misconduct, special interest groups and regulatory capture; and prevent all forms of self-serving policy exploitation. Promote the supervisory and social feedback role of the Vietnam Fatherland Front, and ensure the broad and substantive participation of the people, organizations, and enterprises in law-making and law enforcement.

2. Law-making and law enforcement are the "breakthroughs of breakthroughs" in the completion of institutional framework to drive the national development in the new era, which are key tasks in building and perfecting the socialist rule-of-law State of Vietnam of the People, for the People, and by the People, under the CPV's leadership.

3. Law-making must closely align with reality, “standing on the ground of Vietnamese practice,” selectively absorbing the quintessence of human civilization, ensuring systemic coherence, seizing all opportunities, paving the way and unlocking all resources, and transforming institutions and laws into a competitive advantage and a solid foundation, thereby becoming a strong driver for development. It must facilitate the reaching of the "double-digit" economic growth rate, improve people's livelihoods, and ensure national defense, security, and foreign affairs.

4. Improve the effectiveness of law enforcement, focus on building a culture of law compliance, strictly abide by the Constitution and the law, and closely connect law-making with law enforcement.

5. Investment in formulation of policies and laws means investment in development. The State shall provide and prioritize resources for infrastructure investment, technical modernization, digital transformation, and introduce specific and breakthrough benefits and policies concerning research of strategies and policies, law-making, and for the personnel in charge of these tasks.

II- OBJECTIVES

1. By 2030

Vietnam will have a legal system that is democratic, fair, uniform, public, transparent, feasible, with a strict and consistent implementation mechanism. This legal system will provide a legal basis for the normal, continuous, and smooth operation of agencies after restructuring of the organizational apparatus, remove practical obstacles, facilitate development, and mobilize the participation of all citizens and enterprises in socio-economic development. By 2030, Vietnam will be a developing country with modern industry and high per capita income.

By 2025, the removal of "bottlenecks" caused by legal regulations will be substantially completed. By 2027, the amendment, supplementation, and promulgation of new legislative documents will be completed to provide a uniform legal basis for the operation of the state apparatus according to the three-level government model. By 2028, the legal system on investment and business will be perfected with a view to contribute to placing Vietnam's investment environment among the top three ASEAN countries.

2. Orientations toward 2045

Vietnam will have a high-quality and modern legal system that approaches international standards and practices, is adapted to the country's realities, is strictly and consistently implemented, respects and protects human rights and civil rights effectively. Strictly abiding by the Constitution and laws will be the behavioral norm for all entities in society. National governance will be modern, with a lean, efficacious, efficient and effective state apparatus, meeting the rapid and sustainable development. By 2045, Vietnam will become a developed country with high income in line with the socialist-oriented market economy.

III- TASKS AND SOLUTIONS

1. Ensure the CPV's comprehensive and direct leadership in law-making, and promote the CPV's role in law-making and law enforcement

- CPV committees at all levels must comprehensively and directly lead the institutionalization of the CPV's policies and guidelines into laws, and increase the supervision and inspection thereof. Every official and communist party member must set an example in abiding by and complying with laws, spreading the spirit of strictly abiding by the Constitution and laws.

- The development and perfecting of institutions, and the inspection and supervision of law enforcement must be central, continuous, and regular tasks of ministries and central authorities. Discipline and regulations on power control, the efforts against corruption, wastefulness, misconduct, and "special interest groups" in law-making and enforcement must be strictly complied with. Ministers and Directors of ministerial agencies must directly lead and direct law-making and mainly take responsibility for the quality of policies and laws in sectors under their management, associated with assessment, commendation, and employment of officials, with penalties and handling measures for those who fail to fully fulfill their leadership and management responsibilities.

- Ministries, ministerial agencies, and the National Assembly’s agencies shall have at least one legally trained leader. CPV committees of administrative divisions shall assign their members in charge of judicial affairs and have the Director of the Department of Justice who is a member of the provincial Party committee; introduce mechanisms for the rotation and transfer of officials from the Ministry of Justice to administrative divisions and vice versa to enhance practical experience.

2. Transform mindset and direct the development of the legal system with a view to both meet state management requirements and encourage creativity, unlock the full productive potential and all development resources

- Law-making must fully, accurately, and promptly institutionalize the CPV’s policies and guidelines; term from the overall national interests; transform institutions and laws into a competitive advantage; decisively refrain from the tendency to ban things instead of putting them under control; promote democracy, respect, assure, and effectively protect human rights and citizens' rights; ensure a balance and reasonableness between limit on rights and achieving legitimate interests. Legal regulations must be stable, simple, easy to implement, and focus on citizens and enterprises. Properly promote the role of social ethics, professional ethical standards, and rules of community self-regulation in regulating social relationships.

- Emphasize and proactively research strategies and policies early on the basis of practical experience and global lessons with a view to enhance predictability and improve the law-making quality. Ensure that the formulation and promulgation of legislative documents is democratic, professional, scientific, timely, feasible, and effective; clearly distinguish the formulation of policies from the legislative document drafting; gradually conduct concentrated and professional drafting of legislative documents. Thoroughly, practically, and scientifically conduct summarization, practical survey, research of international experiences, assessment of policy impacts, and policy selection. Increase policy communication, especially policies with significant impacts on society, citizens, and enterprises. Rigorously implement mechanisms for receiving and responding to feedbacks from affected entities; avoid causing difficulties for citizens and enterprises in formulation of policies and law-making. Apart from certain codes and laws regarding human rights, citizens' rights, and judicial procedures to be elaborated, most other laws, particularly those related to development facilitation, the National Assembly shall only stipulate framework matters and fundamental principles. The Government, ministries, and local authorities shall stipulate frequently changing practical matters to ensure flexibility and practicality.

- Formulate and perfect the law on the socialist-oriented market economy in a manner that ensures the building of a favorable, transparent, secure, and low-compliance-cost legal environment; thoroughly reduce and simplify eligibility requirements for investment, business, practicing, and administrative procedures; promote creative startups, improve the stability of the investment and business environment. Ensure the effective and substantive protection of business freedom, property rights, contractual freedom, and equality among parties across all economic sectors; ensure that the private sector is the most important driver of the national economy. Establish a legal foundation for the private sector to effectively access resources such as capital, land, and high-quality personnel; promote the formation and development of regional and global private economic groups; provide substantial and effective assistances for small and medium enterprises. Focus on formulating laws on science, technology, innovation, and digital transformation, developing a regulatory framework for new, non-traditional matters (artificial intelligence, digital transformation, green transformation, data resources, cryptocurrencies, etc.) to form new growth drivers, promote the development of new productive forces, and new industrial sectors. Develop breakthrough mechanisms and policies applicable to international financial centers, free trade zones, and key economic zones, etc.

Urgently make amendments to legislative documents to fulfill the requirements for streamlining the political system’s apparatus, reorganizing administrative divisions, and decentralizing powers in accordance with the principle of “local authorities decide, implement, and take responsibility”, and restructuring the development space in each area.

Formulate and perfect the law on the organization and operation of judicial agencies and judicial assistance in accordance with the objectives and direction of judicial reform. Promote the strong development of the system of legal services, legal assistance services, legal aid services, and security interest registration services so that citizens and enterprises may easily access laws and control legal risks. Prioritize legal resources for the private sector. Research and establish a public lawyer system and conditional mechanisms for enabling public employees to act as lawyers; ensure recognition and enforcement of arbitral awards in conformity with international standards and practices. Study expanding the scope and improving the effectiveness of following the simplified judicial procedures; combine non-litigation methods with judicial methods; encourage and develop out-of court dispute settlement mechanisms such as commercial arbitration, mediation, etc.

3. Create breakthroughs in law enforcement, ensuring that laws are enforced fairly, rigorously, consistently, timely, efficiently, effectively; closely connect law-making with law enforcement

- Maximize the spirit of people serving, development facilitation mindset, and action for the common benefits of officials and public employees; consistently uphold the principle that citizens and enterprises may do anything not prohibited by law. Prioritize ensuring the effectiveness of law enforcement to promote socio-economic development, scientific and technological innovation, digital transformation, and other critical social sectors (food safety, environmental protection, ensuring security, and safety in cyberspace, etc.). Enhance the role of the Vietnam Fatherland Front, social organizations, and professional social organizations in the supervision of law enforcement.

- Focus on building a culture of law compliance, ensuring that the strictly abiding by the Constitution and laws becomes the behavioral norm for all entities in society. Diversify methods of policy communication, legal dissemination and education, especially the application of digital technologies; prioritize broadcasting important content during prime-time slots on national radio and television.

- Pay attention to provision of legal interpretation and guidance on law application to ensure the effect of legislative documents. Regularly inspect, review, consolidate, and systematize legislative documents. Increase dialogue, acceptance of recommendations and feedback, and timely resolve legal difficulties or issues raised by individuals, organizations, enterprises, and local authorities. Continuously assess the effectiveness of laws after promulgation, enhance the technology application, and formulate mechanisms for swiftly identifying , comprehensively and uniformly addressing legal bottlenecks.

- Give priority to prevent and grant warnings against legal violations while increasing supervision, audit and inspection, detect and handle legal violations in a strict and timely manner, especially corruption and misconduct, abuse of power, and lack of responsibility; eliminate shirking responsibility and passing of the buck. Strictly prohibit the exploitation of the efforts against corruption, wastefulness, or misconduct for personal gain or the interference with the normal operation of agencies, organizations, or individuals. Avoid “criminalizing” economic, administrative, and civil relations; do not take administrative measures to intervene and settle civil or economic disputes.

4. Improve the effectiveness of international cooperation and international law

- Perfect mechanisms and improve the capacity of Vietnamese agencies and organizations to ensure full fulfillment of international legal obligations and shape the international legal order; actively participate in the formulation of international institutions and laws; effectively and flexibly use commitments under international treaties to which Vietnam is a signatory. Effectively handle arising international legal issues, especially investment and trade disputes, in order to promptly protect national interests, as well as the legitimate and lawful rights and interests of Vietnamese citizens, organizations, enterprises, and regulatory agencies.

- Implement special mechanisms to attract, recruit, train, and foster high-quality personnel with practical experience in international law and international legal cooperation, as well as in the settlement of international disputes; develop a strategy to increase the presence of Vietnamese experts in international legal organizations and international jurisdiction agencies.

- Expand international cooperation in law and justice; establish and develop a network of foreign legal experts, including overseas Vietnamese, to provide assistance to research and advice on emerging matters in the socio-economic development, development of science and technology, innovation, and digital transformation.

5. Develop breakthrough solutions to improve the quality of legal personnel

- Implement special and superior policies, and apply adequate remuneration and contracting regimes to attract and improve the quality of personnel involved in law-making and law enforcement. Establish mechanisms and policies to extend the service of officials, fail to enable certain officials who have reached retirement age but possess high professional qualifications and deep practical experience in law-making to continue serving. Attract and admit legal experts, scholars, jurists, and experienced lawyers into the public sector. Provide monthly financial assistances equal to 100% of the coefficient- based salary for individuals directly and regularly engaged in strategic research, formulation of polices, and law-making of designated agencies and units.

- Improve the quality of legal training; develop prestigious key institutions for providing legal training; resolutely terminate the operation of legal training institutions that fail to meet the prescribed set of criteria and standards. Develop programs and organize specialized training courses on law-making. Compile qualification standards for judicial officers and legal assistants.

- Focus on making investment with a view to improve the quality of strategic and policy research institutions and legal research institutions under central authorities, specifically development of a Scheme to elevate the strategic and policy research institution under the Ministry of Justice into a national key one and a leading policy and legal research center among ASEAN countries.

6. Increase digital transformation, the application of AI and big data in law-making and law enforcement

- Prioritize resources for building and developing IT infrastructure, big data systems, and applying digital technologies and AI to innovate and modernize law-making and law enforcement; ensure "accuracy, completeness, good maintenance, regular updating ", interconnectivity, ease of access and use, cyber security, and protection of state secrets. Allocate sufficient and timely funding for the immediate implementation of the schemes on building a national legal database and applying AI in the drafting, inspection, and review of legislative documents.

- Apply digital technologies and uniformly implement digital transformation in legal dissemination and education, provision of legal aid services, and registration of security interests; integrate legal education contents into digital learning movements. Introduce policies to encourage digital technology enterprises to develop and provide legal services and utilities.

- Apply special mechanisms and policies to create breakthroughs in the development of science, technology, innovation, and national digital transformation with respect to the digital transformation and application of AI and big data in law-making and law enforcement.

7. Implement special financial mechanisms applicable to law-making and law enforcement

- Innovate the mechanisms for allocating, managing, and using the budget for law-making in a timely, accurate, and sufficient manner associated with expenditures by the results/products of each task/activity. Heads of agencies tasked with law-making shall be granted autonomy in allocation, management, and use of allocated funding and take legal responsibility therefor.

- Allocate the funding for law-making that is at least 0,5% of the annual total budget expenditure and gradually increased in accordance with development demands. Establish a Policy and Law Formulation Support Fund with funding is covered by the state budget and lawful socialized sources from domestic organizations and individuals to assist the law-making and improve the quality thereof; ensure effectiveness, transparency in management, and prevent all forms of self-serving policy exploitation.

- Appropriately and adequately allocate budget for law enforcement. Prioritize adequate funding for legal dissemination and education and provision of legal aid services for disadvantaged and vulnerable groups, and ethnic minorities.

V- IMPLEMENTATION

1. The Central Steering Committee for Perfecting Institutions and Laws shall be established with the head who is the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Vietnam. Its members shall include leaders of the National Assembly, the Government, and relevant agencies.

2. The CPV Committee of the National Assembly shall lead and direct the perfecting of laws in response to the Vietnam's development demands in the new era; increase supervision of compliance with regulations.

3. The CPV Committee of the Government shall lead and direct the development of an action program to implement this Resolution; cooperate with the CPV Committee of the National Assembly to fully and timely institutionalize policies and guidelines set out in this Resolution; direct the Ministry of Justice to draft and submit a resolution on certain special mechanisms and policies for breakthroughs in law-making and law enforcement at the 9th meeting of the 15th National Assembly.

4. The Vietnam Fatherland Front shall lead and direct the development of programs and plans for providing guidance and mobilizing the people to implement the Resolution; promote its supervisory and social criticism role, participate in law-making and law enforcement and building of a culture of law compliance.

5. The Central Propaganda and Mass Mobilization Committee shall take charge of and cooperate with relevant agencies to provide guidance on the effective implementation of the Resolution and provide guidance on increasing the dissemination of its contents.

6. Provincial and municipal CPV Committees shall develop specific programs and plans to enhance leadership and direction in law-making and law enforcement in the local area.

7. The CPV Committee of the Ministry of Justice shall perform its duties as the Standing Body of the Central Steering Committee for Perfecting Institutions and Laws; cooperate with the Central Internal Affairs Committee and relevant agencies to monitor, inspect, and assess the implementation of the Resolution, and send 6-month reports thereon to the Central Steering Committee and the Politburo.

This Resolution shall be disseminated to all CPV cells.