The draft Decree detailing a number of articles of the Law on Environmental Protection 2020 is to cut 18 administrative procedures..., but in fact, it is very easy to create a mechanism for asking - giving.
The draft integrates 7 types of permits and certifications (including: certificate of completion of environmental protection works, certificate of eligibility for environmental protection in importing scrap as raw production materials, industrial emission permits, hazardous waste treatment permits, permits for discharge of wastewater into water sources, permits for discharge of wastewater into irrigation works, registers of hazardous waste generators) into a environmental license. That is, if in the past, many individual permits had to be carried out, now according to the Draft, enterprises only need to carry out one procedure to apply for an environmental permit.
However, 11 domestic business associations as well as the American Chamber of Commerce in Ho Chi Minh City and Da Nang (Amcham Vietnam), the European Chamber of Commerce in Vietnam (EuroCham) said that the integration of 7 papers license into one license, which looks like reform, is actually just 7 contents combined into one license.
This leads to the fact that, when only one of the seven contents is changed, enterprises such as "remove the flag to play again", have to apply for re-grant of environmental permits with cumbersome procedures, not only suffering for the poor. them, but also a great risk of increasing administrative procedures.
According to the business community, the Draft Decree detailing a number of articles of the Law on Environmental Protection 2020 regulating the issuance of environmental permits is too cumbersome and inadequate. For example, with Article 28 of the Draft, the associations said that there was an overlap because out of 8 items in the dossier, there were 5 items provided by enterprises in the application for approval of the impact assessment report. environmental action.
With Article 29 stipulating dossiers, order and procedures for granting environmental permits, authorities also do not specify "other legal documents" for projects that have had an environmental impact assessment report. what; there is no criteria for “necessary cases”, which easily leads to the ask-give mechanism; there is no stipulation on the appraisal time, the time for the establishment of the inspection team, the actual inspection from the date of submission of the license, which is easy to create negative effects; no specified number of additional requests, which can lead to multiple requests, each request being different; Only pre-inspection permits, but without post-inspection, violations cannot be detected.
At this point, it is unreasonable to stipulate that already operating projects must also reapply for environmental permits like new projects. The reason is, the projects are operating legally and a decision has been made to approve the appraisal results of the environmental impact assessment report as well as the component environmental permits. Therefore, if forced to do so, it will cause great obstacles to active investment projects.
Article 30 of the Draft on granting, renewing, granting adjustment and re-granting environmental permits also does not stipulate what documents are required for re-issuance, and what documents are required for adjustment.
Notably, the Draft requires that projects after trial operation fail, they must apply for an environmental permit adjustment, which will waste time and increase costs for businesses. Therefore, for large projects such as oil refining, steel, cement, nitrogen gas, thermal power, phased licensing regulations and many test items, the environmental permitting procedure becomes more difficult. “nightmare” discourages investors.
“These regulations are not consistent with Resolution 68/2020/NQ-CP dated May 12, 2020 of the Government directing: In the period from 2020 to 2025, reduce or simplify at least 20% specified number; strictly control the promulgation of documents with regulations related to business activities..., prevent unnecessary, unreasonable, illegal regulations and cause difficulties for business activities of enterprises and people.
