Looking back at the 2021–2025 term, the culture, sports and tourism sector has witnessed strong changes in legislative thinking, shifting from “doing culture” to “state management of culture”, with the aim of creating an open and transparent legal corridor that unlocks resources for sustainable development.

Breakthroughs in legislative work

Identifying institutional and legal building and perfecting as a key and top-priority task during the 2021–2025 term, the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism has closely coordinated with ministries and sectors to effectively perform legislative tasks from the stage of policy proposal. The results have not only removed sectoral bottlenecks but also created momentum for the development of cultural industries in the coming period.

According to Pham Cao Thai, Head of the Department of Legal Affairs under the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism, perfecting the structure of the cultural legal system means reorganising and rearranging cultural legal documents in a balanced, harmonious, modern, and reasonable manner, covering fields and activities of the sector as well as arising issues from technological revolutions and emerging development trends at present.

The core objective is to help build a synchronised, unified, transparent, and feasible legal system that creates a favourable investment and business environment, ensuring people’s legitimate rights to enjoy culture, and meets national development requirements in the new era.

Looking back at the year 2025 and the 2021–2025 term, it can be seen that the workload undertaken by the sector was enormous. The ministry successfully fulfilled the assigned tasks, advised, proposed, and took the lead in building the largest volume of documents ever recorded.

Specifically, five laws were submitted and promulgated, including the amended Law on Cinema; the amended Law on Prevention and Control of Domestic Violence; the amended Law on Cultural Heritage; the Law amending and supplementing a number of articles of the Law on Intellectual Property; and the Law amending and supplementing a number of articles of the Law on Advertising. In 2025 alone, the sector built two laws attracting strong public attention. They are the Law amending and supplementing a number of articles of the Law on Advertising and the amended Law on Press.

In addition, a variety of sub-law documents were issued to bring the laws into life, including one Resolution of the National Assembly (the Resolution approving the investment policy for the National Target Programme on Cultural Development for 2025–2035), 34 decrees, one decision of the Prime Minister, and 79 circulars.

These results reflect the strong and decisive direction of the Ministry’s leaders, the proactive and close engagement of its units with their tasks, as well as the active coordination of relevant agencies.

The notable feature of this term is a strong change in mindset. The leaders of the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism have always paid attention, directly guided the Department of Legal Affairs and advisory units to focus on improving the quality of institutional construction and innovating awareness throughout the sector, shifting from a "cultural doing" mindset to a "cultural management" mindset. Through regular meetings on lawmaking, arising issues have been listened to, discussed, and addressed promptly right from the policy proposal stage.

The issuance of legal documents on culture in recent years, especially during 2024–2025, has timely institutionalised viewpoints and guidelines of the Party. The legal regulations not only aim to protect legitimate rights and interests of people, businesses, and State agencies, but also contribute to stabilising the investment environment, attracting resources, and promoting international integration.

According to Pham Cao Thai, Director of the Legal Department, many regulations on culture have gradually been concretised, with the content of the regulations becoming more quantitative — something that was previously considered very difficult for the specific nature of cultural activities.

Notably, the newly issued regulations have brought about many breakthrough reforms in administrative procedures, reducing and simplifying paperwork, and creating maximum favourable conditions for people and businesses.

A clear demonstration of this new management mindset is the bold move to allow "self-monitoring" in certain State management activities. For example, businesses are allowed to self-classify films on the Internet when they meet the criteria, instead of the rigid pre-approval mechanism of the past. At the same time, regulations also increase the responsibility of key opinion leaders (KOLs) to the community when participating in advertising activities; strictly regulate the use of Vietnamese in advertising to preserve the purity of the national language; and including regulations on preserving and promoting cultural heritage values.

The process of advising on and drafting documents is becoming increasingly systematic, strictly adhering to procedures. In particular, getting opinions on projects and draft legal documents is becoming more substantive. A spirit of openness and willingness to listen, including dissenting opinions, has been highly appreciated to absorb and explain feedback from agencies, organisations, and the people.

In 2025, the sector also recorded significant efforts in streamlining the apparatus. The sector promptly submitted two decrees to the Government and the Minister issued one circular relating to apparatus restructuring, decentralisation, and to serve the “revolution” on apparatus streamlining and build a two-tier governance model. The backlog of detailed regulations has also been significantly reduced thanks to regular and effective monitoring and follow-up measures.

Frankly identifying “bottlenecks”

Besides these achievements, drawing from the practical implementation of the law and in the face of rapid changes of the scientific and technological revolution, Pham Cao Thai also candidly pointed out a number of remaining issues that need to be addressed.

First, the review of the system of legal documents in some areas has not received adequate attention and lacks proactiveness. This leads to delays in the timely institutionalisation of the Party's viewpoints and guidelines; some documents have shortcomings in practice but are slow to be proposed for amendment, affecting the effectiveness of management and the rights of people and businesses.

Second, building legal documents sometimes fails to strictly adhere to process. Reports reviewing and assessing the impact of laws are often formalistic. Due to a lack of systematic research into the current legal system and international treaties, many specific policy proposals for the cultural sector have not been approved by the relevant agencies, resulting in vague and unconvincing preferential policies.

Third, the organisation and implementation of laws have not been closely linked with guidance on their execution. Guidance on legal execution is sometimes slow, difficult to understand, and causes confusion in implementation. The preliminary and final reviews of law enforcement are not comprehensive, leading to incomplete proposed amendments and reducing the lifespan of legal documents. Furthermore, the dissemination and education of laws in some agencies remain superficial, lacking flexibility in addressing public concerns and failing to attract social resources.

Vision and solutions for the new phase

Entering 2026 and the following years, in order to implement the Politburo’s Resolution No. 66-NQ/TW on renewing the work of law-making and law enforcement to meet the requirements of national development in the new era, the culture, sports, and tourism sector has identified important strategic orientations.

Pham Cao Thai emphasised that “The legal system for culture is the institutionalisation of implementation of the Party’s resolutions, contributing to the revitalisation and development of culture and meeting the requirements of international integration.” The process of improving the legal system must ensure continuity, building on the existing foundation while incorporating new viewpoints on a constructive legal system, simplifying and drastically reducing administrative procedures to better serve the people.

One of the key solutions is a shift in management methods. Legislation on culture needs to be detailed, clearly specifying prohibited contents and providing guidance on criteria and standards so that organisations and individuals have a basis for self-assessing cultural products. The sector will adapt to the trend of moving gradually from “pre-inspection” to “post-inspection”. Accordingly, a number of business conditions will be converted into standards and technical regulations; state authorities will no longer grant licences, but allow organisations and individuals to ensure compliance themselves, while management agencies focus on inspection and supervision of implementation.

Regarding the thematic approach to improving legislation, the sector will focus on researching and reviewing regulations on the development of the cultural industry. Therefore, it will propose the development of specialised legal documents, in order to build a law regulating the cultural industry, or a law on culture, or a law regulating the arts, based on existing specialised laws and decrees.

At the same time, the sector will focus on reviewing to issue missing legal documents and updating those that are in line with social development. This includes, for example, updating the list of public services, issuing economic and technical norms, and establishing inspection and supervision mechanisms. In particular, it is necessary to provide detailed regulations on policies for the socialisation of cultural activities and to build special mechanisms to develop cultural services that are difficult to recoup investment, have low profitability, but carry great social significance.

Finally, the human factor is still crucial. The sector will focus on enhancing the capacity of civil servants in law-making and law enforcement, while strengthening policy communication in conjunction with dissemination, education, and guidance on the implementation of the law in a substantive and effective way.

The completion of the structure of the cultural legal system is not only an inherent requirement of the sector but also a practical requirement of the national development. With the foundations created in the past term and a newly created mindset, the legal system on culture will continue to be completed, becoming a solid pillar to ensure that culture is truly the spiritual foundation and an endogenous driving force for the country’s sustainable development in the new era.