Hanoi (VNA) - The National Assembly (NA) Standing Committee reviewed revisions to the draft amended Law on Marine and Island Resources and Environment and the Law on amendments and supplements to several articles of the Law on Environmental Protection during its 8th session in Hanoi on November 13.
NA President Tran Thanh Man pushed for stronger decentralisation and delegation of authority and a decisive shift from pre-audit to post-audit in the amendments of environmental protection law. He said cutting pre-audit must come with stronger monitoring capacity and clear responsibility for relevant agencies and organisations.
On environmental protection spending, he backed the Government’s stance against writing a 2% budget floor into the law, saying that annual allocations are already set by the NA with specific categories and ratios.
On exempting secondary projects in industrial clusters and parks from environmental impact assessment, he called for further procedural review and simplification to ease business investment.
He said the draft law must clarify each locality’s and agency’s responsibility for coordinating management, control and handling of inter-provincial pollution, and effectively solving practical problems.
For the draft amended marine resources law, he asked relevant agencies to clarify the coordination mechanism and conflict settlement in exploiting and using marine space.
NA Vice President Nguyen Hong Dien said the NA Standing Committee agreed to ask the Government to continue studying and reviewing five areas, including inter-sectoral coordination and conflict settlement in marine spatial management, construction and management of artificial islands and offshore works, use-right certificates related to marine areas, marine environment carrying capacity, and coastal construction setbacks.
The NA Standing Committee agreed to submit both draft laws to the legislature for adoption following revisions based on the session’s conclusions.
It also reviewed revisions to the amended Penal Code and draft resolution on its enforcement, the amended Criminal Procedure Code and its enforcement resolution, the amended Law on the Organisation of Criminal Investigation Agencies, and a draft NA resolution piloting the recovery and handling of crime-related assets without a conviction./.
