Opinions on Further Standardizing Ecological Environment Law Enforcement to Assist in Optimizing the Business Environment: Ecological environment departments (bureaus) of various provinces, autonomous regions, and municipalities directly under the central government, and ecological environment bureaus of Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps: In order to thoroughly implement the decision-making departments of the Party Central Committee and the State Council on strictly regulating enterprise law enforcement, further standardize ecological environment administrative law enforcement behavior, optimize and innovate law enforcement methods, improve law enforcement quality and efficiency, create a rule of law business environment, effectively protect the legitimate rights and interests of enterprises, and serve high-quality economic and social development, the following opinions are proposed. 2、 Strengthen source prevention, pay attention to advance warning, regard preventing illegal behavior as an important task of regulatory law enforcement, guide enterprises to continuously strengthen risk prevention and control awareness, focus on self-examination and self correction, and actively rectify. Explore the use of intelligent platforms to promptly alert enterprises of illegal risks, and implement point-to-point early warning for potential risks such as expiration of pollutant discharge permits, automatic monitoring data exceeding standards, and emissions exceeding permits. Promptly remind peer enterprises of common and typical problems discovered in individual cases, guide them to strengthen prevention from the source, and eliminate illegal hazards. 3、 Provide guidance on legal education, guide enterprises to abide by the law, take legal education as an important prerequisite for regulatory enforcement, explore innovative ways of legal education, implement targeted and precise legal education for different types of enterprises, and guide enterprises to know and abide by the law. Encourage enterprises to independently conduct "physical examinations", explore "appointment based" law enforcement services, promote the cultivation of corporate compliance culture, and promote green transformation and upgrading. For enterprises with high management level and strong willingness to abide by the law, we will promote their inclusion in the positive list of supervision and law enforcement, and implement positive incentive measures such as on-site inspection exemption, control exemption, and green finance. Encourage enterprises to obtain points for learning laws and explore the leading role of reducing penalties for learning laws. 4、 Strengthen technological empowerment, promote precision law enforcement, continuously strengthen the construction of digital platforms, actively use technologies such as big data, big model AI, and IoT perception to accurately screen problem clues, and achieve a transformation from "human wave tactics" to "smart law enforcement", and from "human defense as the main focus" to "technical defense as the priority". Vigorously promote non site and non sensory law enforcement, accurately identify and pinpoint problems, accurately determine targets and scope, avoid simple and extensive governance, and reduce indiscriminate and dragnet investigations. It is strictly prohibited to do nothing or act slowly during normal times, and to enforce the law in a one size fits all manner when urgent, in order to prevent indiscriminate and indiscriminate punishment, as well as indiscriminate "one punishment" and "one detention". 5、 Standardize inspections related to enterprises, constrain law enforcement actions, strengthen coordination and overall planning of on-site inspections, compare with the list of rights and responsibilities, scientifically formulate inspection plans, achieve "one investigation" at a time, promote full process, full element, and full link inspections, and reduce multiple inspections and repetitive inspections. Implement administrative inspections in accordance with the law, strictly follow law enforcement procedures, and comprehensively standardize law enforcement processes. Fully utilize law enforcement recorders to achieve traceable and traceable management of the entire process of law enforcement actions. Implement the code of conduct for ecological environment law enforcement personnel, promote strict, standardized, fair, civilized, and clean law enforcement, and strictly prohibit arbitrary law enforcement, rough law enforcement, selective law enforcement, and profit driven law enforcement.
6、 Highlighting the key points of law enforcement, adhering to the principle of balancing leniency and strictness to improve the environmental quality of key river basins as the core, focusing on prominent environmental issues strongly reflected by the people, and scientifically allocating law enforcement resources. Grasp the main contradiction issues, focus on key regional river basins, and severely punish serious violations such as fraud, illegal discharge, unlicensed discharge, excessive and total discharge, abnormal operation of pollution control facilities, and failure to implement heavy pollution weather control and production restriction measures in accordance with the law. Increase the frequency of daily supervision for enterprises that have discovered major environmental problems, and impose no punishment on enterprises that have committed minor violations in accordance with the law, providing moderate room for error. 7、 Unified discretionary standards, promoting the improvement of the administrative penalty discretionary benchmark system for excessive punishment, strictly regulating the exercise of discretionary power, unifying law enforcement standards and scales, promoting the realization of similar cases being punished equally, and maintaining a fair competition market order. Scientifically refine and quantify the list of items that are not allowed, can be exempted, mitigated, given lighter or heavier punishments, regularly sort out and release typical cases, and strengthen guidance and application. Taking into account both the legal system and objective reality, fully considering the personal feelings of the public, ensuring that penalties are commensurate and legal principles are integrated. 8、 Strengthen flexible law enforcement, reflect the temperature of law enforcement, adhere to the combination of education and punishment, service and management, comprehensively use persuasive education, persuasion demonstration, guidance and interview methods, explore innovative systems such as apology commitment, volunteer service, and law learning points, and actively guide enterprises to abide by the law. Promote flexible law enforcement and prudently adopt measures such as sealing, seizing, restricting production, and suspending production for rectification. Promote reasoning based law enforcement throughout the entire process, enhance the persuasiveness and credibility of law enforcement. If there are difficulties for the parties involved, approval shall be granted in accordance with the law to postpone or pay fines in installments. 9、 Emphasis should be placed on post punishment rectification to enhance law enforcement effectiveness. When imposing penalties, the parties involved should be ordered to correct or have their illegal behavior corrected within a specified period of time, and fines should not be used as collateral. For minor violations that are not punished, the obligation to educate the parties involved should be fulfilled, guiding them to correct the illegal behavior in a timely manner, and ensuring exemption from punishment and liability. Establish and improve systems and mechanisms for post penalty rectification verification, supervision services, etc., track the progress of enterprise rectification, help enterprises overcome difficulties, and guide enterprises to operate in compliance. 10、 Strengthen team building, establish a good image, enhance ecological environment administrative law enforcement and inspection, implement hierarchical supervision and internal error correction, timely correct problems such as lax, non-standard, opaque, uncivilized law enforcement, inaction, and disorderly behavior. Abstain from formalism and bureaucracy, and focus on reducing the burden on the grassroots. By combining positive incentives with negative constraints, continuously regulating law enforcement behavior, improving law enforcement level, and enhancing team quality, we can effectively enhance the authority and credibility of ecological environment law enforcement. The General Office of the Ministry of Ecology and Environment issued on January 24, 2025 (this document is publicly available)
