The Special Land Policies: Does the National Assembly Set a Dangerous Legal Precedent? – Part 1 

In recent months, two legal issues have dominated public debate: land policy and amendments to the Penal Code. 

The former centers on mega-projects, controversies surrounding land acquisition, compensation plans for affected residents, and violations within the land sector. 

The latter involves a comprehensive overhaul of the legal system’s strictest provisions, including the Ministry of Public Security’s proposals regarding crimes and punishments.

Amid these developments, one legal document that sat squarely between land policy and criminal law slipped by with little public attention.

Resolution 29/2026 on “special mechanisms and policies for handling land-law violations committed by organizations and individuals before the 2024 Land Law took effect and for resolving difficulties and obstacles facing stalled and prolonged projects” was passed by the National Assembly on April 24, 2026. [1] It took effect just one week later.

While the document initially appears to be a standard administrative framework for handling land law violations, the reality is far more severe. The resolution directly touches the foundations of the Penal Code and threatens the existing legal order.

How Resolution 29/2026 Races Ahead of the Penal Code

Within Việt Nam’s legal system, the Penal Code acts as the primary legal instrument of criminal policy beneath the Constitution. Any legislative changes regarding crimes and punishments must be grounded in it. 

Resolution 29/2026, however, takes the opposite approach.

While Resolution 29/2026 and the Penal Code are both normative legal documents enacted by the National Assembly, their interaction is problematic. Under Clause 2, Article 10 of the current Law on the Promulgation of Legal Normative Documents, when documents from the same authority contain conflicting provisions on the same issue, the later-issued document prevails. [2] Yet, Resolution 29/2026 does not merely provide different rules on an existing issue; it regulates entirely new matters, creating a direct conflict.

Despite being a resolution on land issues, Resolution 29/2026 establishes several new criminal liability mechanisms absent from the current Penal Code. [3] 

Specifically, Chapter II (Articles 5 through 10) introduces provisions on the postponement of criminal prosecution, non-prosecution, exemption from criminal liability, non-initiation of criminal cases, suspension or termination of investigations, and the postponement or exemption from serving criminal sentences.

The postponement of criminal prosecution is an entirely new concept in Vietnamese criminal law. [4] Neither the Penal Code nor the Criminal Procedure Code allows prosecuting authorities to halt the prosecution process early so an offender can remedy the consequences within a specified timeframe. [5] [6] 

Similarly, granting an exemption from criminal liability simply because the offender has fully remedied the consequences and met additional conditions is unprecedented. [7]

These concepts have only appeared as policy proposals within the draft amendment dossier for the Penal Code. [8] This dossier was released for public consultation from April 17, 2026, to May 7, 2026. [9] 

However, the draft amended Penal Code with specific provisions is not expected to be released for public comment until July 2026. [10] Furthermore, it must wait until the third session of the 16th National Assembly in 2027 to be formally debated in the legislature.

Because Resolution 29/2026 introduces mechanisms that do not yet exist in the Penal Code, its application cannot be justified by the principle that later-enacted documents prevail. 

Moreover, it is a special-purpose resolution concerning land matters, not a specialized statute. Under the Law on Promulgation of Legal Normative Documents, a National Assembly resolution is designed for exceptional circumstances to address urgent needs or test policies, not to replace laws or establish long-term legal institutions. [11]

Hence, Resolution 29/2026 should not be used to establish foundational changes in criminal law, such as non-prosecution or the postponement of criminal prosecution. The impact of such provisions extends far beyond land administration and alters the core structure of criminal law.

Even the Land Law itself is restricted to governing land management and use. While it may define violations in the land sector, determining if conduct amounts to a crime and under what conditions criminal liability may be waived remains the exclusive domain of the Penal Code. 

Ultimately, a special-purpose resolution on land matters has preempted the Penal Code, establishing exceptions to criminal liability and forcing the legal system to accept them.

The Consequences of This Legislative Approach

The enactment of Resolution 29/2026 does more than create conflicts within criminal law; it establishes a deeply troubling precedent for future legislative activity. 

When a specialized land resolution can mandate mechanisms that directly affect criminal liability, the boundary between a foundational criminal statute and special regulatory measures is blurred. In effect, the Penal Code is overtaken by a special-purpose legal instrument, despite being the central pillar of criminal policy.

A mechanism deemed “special” in one field does not gain the authority to operate outside the established legal order. Exceptions must be designed within the framework of general law and subjected to strict limitations. Administrative difficulties in the land sector cannot justify the creation of unprecedented legal institutions, nor should a document intended for a specific crisis serve as a testing ground for reshaping the broader legal system. 

If this precedent expands, the Penal Code and the broader system of specialized laws will cease to function as a common policymaking framework, eventually eroding under the weight of scattered exceptions.

Furthermore, this legislative approach severely undermines legal predictability. Citizens, businesses, and prosecuting authorities rely on a stable system of rules to determine criminal conduct, prosecution timelines, and the conditions under which liability may be waived or postponed. 

Allowing individual specialized resolutions to alter these fundamental issues renders the law dangerously unpredictable.

Most concerning is the risk that special-purpose resolutions will become an alternative route for changing criminal policy, bypassing the rigorous process required to amend the Penal Code. 

Standard code amendments demand comprehensive impact assessments, public consultation, and broad expert review. In contrast, a special-purpose resolution is often enacted rapidly to address urgent demands, as seen with Resolution 29/2026 taking effect just one week after its adoption. 

As a result, every normative document enacted in this manner potentially introduces a new exception, and each exception incrementally destabilizes the existing legal order.

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Trường An wrote this article in Vietnamese and published it in Luật Khoa Magazine on June 3, 2026. Đàm Vĩnh Hằng translated it into English for The Vietnamese Magazine.