In the five years since the full implementation, the relevant mechanisms have been continuously improved and the system practice has been enriched day by day.

Prosecutorial public interest litigation to protect a better life (rule of law headlines)

　　Our reporter Jin Xin

　　On June 27, 2017, the Standing Committee of the 12th National People's Congress revised the Civil Procedure Law and Administrative Procedure Law, and formally established the system for procuratorial organs to initiate public interest litigation.

On July 1, 2017, the public interest litigation system initiated by the procuratorial organs was rolled out nationwide.

　　Promote the improvement of the legal system of public interest litigation, improve the rules system, actively and steadily explore new areas of public interest litigation, and actively cooperate with administrative agencies in governance... Over the past five years, procuratorial public interest litigation has actively responded to public interest appeals, safeguarded the people's good life, and its practice has become increasingly rich and in-depth .

What are the main problems encountered in the implementation of procuratorial public interest litigation, and what measures have been taken to solve them?

What problems are you currently facing, and what are the directions for further development?

With these questions in mind, the reporter interviewed the staff of the procuratorate and relevant experts and scholars.

　　Explore new areas of public interest litigation

　　Both "positive" and "safe"

　　"A while ago, an important problem faced by public interest litigation, especially procuratorial public interest litigation, was that the field was narrow, focusing on several fields such as environmental protection, food and drug safety," said Yao Jun, an associate professor at Fudan University Law School.

　　To this end, in recent years, procuratorial organs have been adapting to the needs of social development and exploring new areas of public interest litigation.

Previously, the Supreme People's Procuratorate studied and implemented the spirit of the Fourth Plenary Session of the 19th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, and adjusted the guiding principle for exploring and expanding new fields of public interest litigation from "safe and active" to "active and safe."

In 2021, the Supreme People's Procuratorate will cooperate with the legislature to actively promote the newly formulated, revised and implemented laws on the Protection of Minors, the Work Safety Law, the Law on the Status of Military Personnel and the Protection of Rights and Interests, and the Personal Information Protection Law to add procuratorial public interest litigation clauses, and the statutory field has been extended to "4+5" (the protection of ecological environment and resources, food and drug safety, protection of state-owned property, assignment of state-owned land use rights, and the protection of the rights and interests of heroes and martyrs, the protection of minors, safety production, personal information protection, Military Status and Rights Protection 5 areas authorized by separate law).

On June 24 this year, the Anti-Monopoly Law, which was just revised by the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress, was also written into public interest litigation clauses.

This year's National Prosecutors General (Expanded) Conference also proposed to actively and prudently focus on handling public interest litigation cases in the fields of network governance, financial securities, intellectual property, cultural relics and cultural heritage protection, protection of women's rights and interests...

　　"The exploration of new statutory fields and other new fields of public interest litigation has not only become an important part of the entire public interest litigation case handling, but also plays an increasingly important role in promoting the system to play a wider and deeper governance efficiency." Hu Weilie, director of the Eighth Procuratorate, said.

　　In 2021, the Supreme People's Procuratorate directly filed a case against a company in Zhejiang Province who used the name and portrait of Chen Wangdao, the first translator of the full Chinese translation of the Communist Manifesto, to register a trademark for personal gain, resulting in the infringement of intellectual property rights of red resources.

After negotiating with the State Intellectual Property Office on the review and cancellation of suspected illegal trademarks and the elimination of social impact, the State Intellectual Property Office made a decision in August 2021 to declare the five registered trademarks of "Wangdao" involved in the case invalid.

　　Xu Jing, a lawyer from a Shanghai law firm, said that when procuratorial organs extend public interest litigation to areas closely related to individual interests, such as intellectual property, how do they determine that this area involves social and public interests and needs to be included in the scope of public interest litigation to ensure the rights of individuals to be punished freedom of action and avoiding abuse of the right to appeal are issues of concern to society.

　　In the face of doubts, the procuratorial organs also have guarantee measures.

Qiu Jinghui, prosecutor of the Eighth Procuratorate's Office of the Supreme People's Procuratorate, introduced that in order to ensure the "safety" when exploring new fields and avoid abuse of the right to sue, the Supreme People's Procuratorate has formulated relevant guiding opinions, in addition to requiring adherence to the guiding principle of "active and stable" and accurate grasp of new areas In addition to the key scope of the new field, it is also required to strictly grasp the conditions for filing cases in new fields, strengthen the guarantee of case handling procedures, clearly define the conditions for filing cases in new fields and the "negative list" that should not be filed, and strictly regulate the approval and filing of cases in new fields.

　　Public interest litigation promotes litigation source governance

　　Treat both "already sick" and "not sick"

　　General Secretary Xi Jinping emphasized that the construction of the rule of law must not only focus on the end and cure the disease, but also focus on the front end and treat the disease before.

　　According to reports, the procuratorial public interest litigation has initially focused on the restoration of public welfare damages in individual cases, and now it pays more attention to tracing the source, addressing the root cause, focusing on the front end, and treating the disease before it occurs, so as to give full play to the effectiveness of institutional governance.

　　Qin Tianbao, director of the Environmental Law Research Institute of Wuhan University and vice-chairman and secretary-general of the Environmental Resource Law Research Association of the China Law Society, said that administrative public interest lawsuits brought by procuratorial organs can better mobilize the enthusiasm of administrative organs for risk supervision, and can achieve prevention from the regulatory level. function.

At the same time, pre-litigation procedures such as pre-litigation procuratorial recommendations have advantages in coordinating the forces of all parties and eliminating risks as soon as possible.

　　In recent years, procuratorial organs have urged administrative organs to correct their mistakes and perform their duties in accordance with the law by means of pre-litigation procuratorial suggestions, and established the goal of "protecting the public interest before litigation is the best judicial state".

In practice, the administrative organs attach great importance to the procuratorial organs' pre-litigation procuratorial suggestions, and actively carry out rectification.

In 2021, the response and rectification rate of administrative organs in the pre-litigation stage has continued to increase from 97.2% in 2018 to 99.49%.

　　"Administrative public interest litigation, especially the design of its pre-litigation procedures, as the most Chinese part of procuratorial public interest litigation, embodies the requirement of 'front-end resolution' of litigation source governance." Deputy Director of the Eighth Procuratorate of the Supreme People's Procuratorate Xu Quanbing said.

　　"Public interest protection and litigation source governance are both systematic projects. From the perspective of the development of the public interest litigation procuratorial system and practice, the public interest litigation procuratorial system is highly consistent with the value orientation of litigation source governance." Wang Jing, prosecutor of the Eighth Procuratorate of the Supreme People's Procuratorate, said, Public interests are extensive. In order to better safeguard national interests and social public interests, in recent years, procuratorial organs have focused on the extension of their case-handling functions, from handling public interest litigation cases to promoting rectification of general problems, to boosting long-term legislation and systems. The improvement of the mechanism reflects a systematic pursuit of continuously tracing the source of litigation, promoting and deepening the governance of the source of litigation, and reducing conflicts and disputes from the source.

　　Previously, after receiving complaints from citizens, the People's Procuratorate of Didao District, Jixi City, Heilongjiang Province investigated and found that the pumping stations affiliated to the relevant water supply companies carried out secondary water supply without obtaining a sanitation permit, and those who directly engaged in water supply did not obtain a health certificate. The water tank of the pressure station was not cleaned and disinfected on a regular basis according to regulations, and there were potential safety hazards in the water quality.

　　At the end of 2019, the Heilongjiang Provincial Procuratorate, through the case-by-case supervision of Jixi City, found that the hidden dangers of secondary water supply safety are common in the province and endanger public health.

The hospital immediately launched an investigation into more than 1,000 residential communities and related enterprises in 139 counties (cities) in the province, and issued procuratorial recommendations to the provincial government to urge the solution of drinking water safety problems in more than 600 residential communities, involving 400,000 households and 880,000 residents. People, prompting the province to carry out a special campaign for the reconstruction of secondary water supply facilities in cities and towns.

　　In addition, in order to truly cure the "preventive disease", preventive public interest litigation has also been paid more and more attention.

In recent years, procuratorial organs have been exploring preventive public interest litigation in key areas closely related to the vital interests of the people, such as the ecological environment, food and drug safety, and public safety.

Zhejiang, Shaanxi, Guangdong, Yunnan and other places have incorporated preventive public interest litigation into their local legislation on procuratorial public interest litigation.

　　Strengthen systematic institutional design

　　Promote system improvement in deepening practice and exploration

　　At present, another problem faced by procuratorial public interest litigation is to strengthen the system design, and the requirements for system standardization and system integrity and coordination are more urgent.

　　"For example, both the Civil Procedure Law and the Administrative Litigation Law have only one or even one stipulation on public interest litigation, and the content is limited to the qualifications and scope of application of plaintiffs, and the relevant separate laws are roughly the same, or even just citations, and their actual effect is only to issue 'Operation permission'," said Consolidation, a researcher at Peking University Law School.

　　It has been five years since procuratorial public interest litigation has been fully launched, and more emphasis is placed on legislation from the top-level design.

It is necessary to improve the rule setting.

　　In terms of organizational security, the revised Organization Law of the People's Procuratorate and the Procuratorate Law have respectively made clear the exercise of powers by procuratorates, the initiation of public interest litigation in accordance with the law, and the public interest litigation responsibilities of prosecutors.

　　In response to the problems of scattered normative basis and weak operability in the practice of public interest litigation case handling, the Supreme People's Procuratorate formulated the "People's Procuratorate's Public Interest Litigation Case Handling Rules" last year. Case handling provides a whole-process and systematic normative basis.

In addition, the Supreme People's Procuratorate specially formulated the "Seven Prosecution Bans on Public Interest Litigation" to strictly prevent judicial irregularities that may occur in the handling of public interest litigation cases, as a "high-voltage line" and "curse" to solve outstanding problems in the prevention and control of public interest litigation integrity risks.

　　Summarizing the law of handling cases in key areas and links, recently, the "two highs" jointly issued the "Regulations on Several Issues Concerning Handling of Marine Natural Resources and Ecological Environment Public Interest Litigation Cases", and the Supreme People's Procuratorate issued "People's Procuratorate Public Interest Litigation Procuratorate Handling Heroes and Martyrs" The Guidelines for the Protection of Civil Public Interest Litigation Cases, the Guidelines for the People's Procuratorate's Public Interest Litigation Case Handling and Hearing Work, etc., promote the gradual formation of a case handling guidance system with broad coverage and strong operability.

　　"The existing laws have comparative principles for public interest litigation, and traditional procedural law rules cannot meet the complex practical needs of public interest litigation. Based on the needs of judicial practice, the Supreme People's Court and the Supreme People's Procuratorate have issued a large number of judicial interpretations to solve the problem." Northwest University of Political Science and Law Professor Wang Zhouhu, vice president of the Administrative Law Research Association of the China Law Society, believes that in the long run, it is an inevitable requirement to form a unified and efficient public interest litigation legal system.

　　"We will summarize practical experience, actively promote the improvement of relevant legislation, and give better play to the role of the rule of law in leading, standardizing and guaranteeing." Hu Weilie said that the procuratorial organs will continue to promote the provincial people's congress standing committee to issue special resolutions and decisions on strengthening procuratorial public interest litigation. Encourage the use of procuratorial public interest litigation as a legal safeguard measure in relevant local legislation.

　　"People's Daily" (Version 19 on June 30, 2022)