Judgment execution in Vietnam has seen a significant progress. However, according to experts, there are still many shortcomings, which lead to a low effectiveness of judgment and decisions of the court. Therefore, the building of the judgment execution code is necessary.
On March 1, 2006, the Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and Industry (VCCI) co-operated with the Star Vietnam project to organise a symposium to gather inputs and comments from experts and enterprises to the tenth draft of the code on judgment execution. Tran Huu Huynh, head of the Legal Department of VCCI, said that apart from inputs and comments to the draft, many people still doubted the feasibility of the code.
There are different ideas about the scope of the code, which can be divided into three groups. The first group states that it is necessary to build a unified judgment execution code for civil, administrative and criminal judgment execution. The second says that two separate judgment execution codes for civil and criminal judgment execution because there are two separate codes, the Criminal Code and Civil Code with their separate scope. The third states that the code shall adjust the organisation of judgment execution while procedures shall be stipulated by specific documents.
Nguyen Binh, deputy had of the Department of Civil and Economic Law, the Ministry of Justice, said that even though civil and criminal judgment execution activities have differences, in many cases under the court’s decision one entity has to execute both civil and criminal judgment. It is possible to see that judgment execution activities have close relations. Therefore, it is necessary to build a unified judgment execution code, which shall manage the execution of judgments. The code shall help settle present shortcomings.
Addressing the symposium, John Bentley, chief legal adviser to the Star project, said that if the judgment execution code could meet all the requirements in seven chapters of BTA, it would meet 70 per cent of requirements of the WTO. Talking about the relationship between the building of the judgment execution code with the Vietnam-US Bilateral Trade Agreement (BTA) and regulations of the World Trade Organisation (WTO), Nguyen Binh said that the code basically would fit the Vietnam-US BTA and regulations of the WTO. However, the draft of the code still needs further research and supplementation to meet international integration requirements.
Around 15 inputs and comments were contributed at the symposium, mainly concentrating on temporary emergency measures, and civil and administrative judgment execution. Regarding the coercion of payment, many ideas stated that payment, around 30 per cent of monthly income of judgment execution people, was groundless because the remaining 70 per cent of high income was too much. Talking about the issue, Le Thu Ha from the University of Justice, said that the payment should be stipulated to be equal to 70 per cent of monthly incomes.
James F. Harrigan, legal adiviser to the judgment execution agency San Francisco, California, the US stated some principles for legal reform to improve the effectiveness of civil judgment execution in Vietnam. He stated examples about intellectual property judgment execution, decisions of the court and foreign arbitrators. He affirmed that the putting into the code principles and international practice would help Vietnam improve its judgment execution.
Nguyen Thoa
Vietnamese
