After more than four years of public advocacy, parliament on March 22 passed a landmark civil society bill that was hailed by the United Nations for tearing down legislative and administrative barriers for registering non-profit organizations and broadening the scope, geographical reach and type of activities they can conduct.
The long-awaited bill was passed by an absolute majority of 334 members of parliament and brings the nation’s legislation closer to norms outlined by the Council of Europe’s Parliamentary Assembly, a March 28 U.N. statement said.
Maryna Stavniychuk, head of the constitutional and legal modernization department with the Presidential Administration, said President Viktor Yanukovych is expected to sign the bill into force.
The Communist Party was the only party that didn’t have a hand in voting for the bill, observed Bloc of Yulia Tymoshenko lawmaker Andriy Shevchenko, who also noted that Party of Regions deputy Yuri Miroshnichenko actively lobbied for bi-partisan support for the bill.
Coming into effect in January 2013, the bill simplifies and expedites the registration procedure for civil society organizations and allows them to conduct business activity in an environment where most local groups are run on shoe-string budgets, being reliant on mostly a shrinking pool of foreign grant money.
According to Shevchenko, the bill’s co-initiator, administrative and legislative barriers exist currently that subdue civic activity.
As a result, the number of registered civic organizations in Ukraine is one of the lowest in Europe.
There are 17 civic organizations for every 10,000 people in the nation, whereas in Hungary there are 46, in Croatia 85, and 200 in Estonia, noted Shevchenko.
The bill also eliminates many forms of discrimination when compared to how government treats businesses.
Additional limits currently in place include requiring 42 people and over 23 support documents to establish a group with nationwide status, which takes 30-40 days to register.
In contrast, it just takes a legal entity or person, four supporting documents and three business days to register a business, said Maksym Latsyba, a civil society expert at the Ukrainian Center for Independent Political Research.
Under the current bill, non-profits will be able to register in seven business days and without having to pay a registration fee.
The bill also allows civil society organizations to provide services to people who are not members of the group and in geographical areas beyond the organization’s place of registration, said Oleksandr Vinnikov, a lawyer at the European Law Advancement Network and co-author of the bill.
The most dynamic change for non-profit groups is that they’ll be able to conduct business activities, a measure that experts hope will vault social entrepreneurship activities to the forefront of NGO activity and ease the fundraising hardships they currently face.
This will be the coming out for civic organizations, said Valeriy Oliynyk, a UNDP program manager.
He said this is a historic breakthrough for civil society by allowing non-profits to sell their services or products and use them to support chartered activities or cover utility bills, for instance.
Kyiv Post staff writer Mark Rachkevych can be reached at [email protected].
