President of the National Assembly Trần Thanh Mẫn speaks at the second meeting of the Steering Committee for the Comprehensive Review of the System of Legal Normative Documents in Hà Nội on Wednesday. VNA/VNS Photo

HÀ NỘI — President of the National Assembly (NA) Trần Thanh Mẫn on Wednesday called for the findings of a comprehensive review of Việt Nam’s system of legal normative documents to be immediately translated into concrete legislative and executive action, stressing that the review must ultimately remove institutional bottlenecks and create new room for national development.

Chairing the second meeting of the Steering Committee for the Comprehensive Review of the System of Legal Normative Documents in Hà Nội, NA President Mẫn, head of the Steering Committee, said the review is a critically important task that has received close attention from General Secretary of the Communist Party of Việt Nam (CPV) Central Committee and President Tô Lâm and Permanent Member of the Party Central Committee’s Secretariat Trần Cẩm Tú.

He commended the Government, the Ministry of Justice, the NA’s Committee on Legal and Judicial Affairs and relevant agencies for their proactive coordination and efforts in carrying out a task of unprecedented scale, with a tight timeline and high quality requirements.

According to the top legislator, significant progress has been made since the Steering Committee’s first meeting. However, the review has so far mainly covered the stages of “identification and review.” The decisive phase ahead will be to standardise the findings, improve the quality of conclusions and turn every recommendation into a specific course of action.

He said each problem must be clearly assigned to the competent authority. Laws falling under the NA’s jurisdiction must be amended by the legislature, Government decrees by the Government, ministy-level circulars by the relevant ministries, and improperly issued local regulations by the respective local authorities.

He also requested members of the Steering Committee, ministers, heads of ministry-level agencies and chairpersons of provincial-level People’s Committees to personally review and take responsibility for the quality of the findings concerning their respective sectors and localities.

The NA President stressed that reports should not merely list problematic regulations but clearly identify orientations, tasks, solutions and roadmaps for institutional improvement, in line with the Politburo’s Resolution No 66-NQ/TW on renewing lawmaking and law enforcement to meet national development requirements in the new era and conclusions of the Party Central Committee. The quality of each report, he said, will serve as a measure of the capacity and responsibility of the head of each ministry, agency or locality.

Referring to General Secretary and President Lâm’s assessment that major institutional bottlenecks have basically been removed and the focus should now shift to implementation, the top legislator said the review must identify exactly where enforcement bottlenecks lie, which ministry, sector or locality is responsible for, and what has caused them.

He stressed that the comprehensive review should not become an exercise in counting legal documents, but rather a “national institutional quality audit” serving the restructuring and improvement of the legal framework and opening up new development space.

The NA President also linked the review to the NA’s recent legislative work. During its first extraordinary session, the 16th-term legislature worked continuously for 17 days, including weekends, to consider and adopt a large number of laws and resolutions aimed at removing difficulties, cutting procedures, promoting decentralisation and delegation of power, mobilising resources and creating new growth drivers.

Therefore, he said, the review should be regarded as a direct continuation of the process of legislative reform and law enforcement. Decisions already made by the National Assembly must be implemented smoothly, while problems arising in practice must be identified and addressed promptly.

Where shortcomings and solutions have already been clearly identified, amendments should be made without waiting for the entire review process to conclude, he stressed.

The top legislator also called for continued streamlining of the legal system to make regulations easier to find, understand and implement, and reduce layers, procedures and compliance costs. Laws, he stressed, must not only be correct but also effective, feasible and development-oriented.

At the meeting, Deputy Prime Minister Lê Tiến Châu, Deputy Head of the Steering Committee, reported that all 23 central agencies and 34 localities have issued plans and conducted reviews. As of June 30, 2026, 45,792 legal normative documents had been identified as falling within the scope of the review, with 13,242 already reviewed, with solutions already proposed for their shortcomings.

NA President Mẫn asked the Government and the Ministry of Justice to fully incorporate opinions raised at the meeting and finalise the report for submission to the National Assembly Standing Committee before August 31, ensuring that it reaches the competent authorities before September 5. — VNA/VNS