Lawtrend on publication of amendments to some laws on activities of public associations

The expert of the Legal Transformation Centre “Lawtrend”, analyses the law "On Amendments to Some Laws of the Republic of Belarus on the activities of political parties and other public associations”.

 On 19 November, on the National Legal Internet Portal of the Republic of Belarus the Law of the Republic of Belarus "On Amendments to Some Laws of the Republic of Belarus on the activities of political parties and other public associations" adopted on 2 October, 2013 was published.

The main criticism of the document consists in the fact that the Law still contains norms which do not correspond to the international standards on the freedom of association and on the legal regulation of not-for-profit organizations.

The elaboration of the law was carried out in accordance with the plan of draft laws for 2012 approved by the Presidential Decree of January 9, 2012 № 21 "On the approval of the plan of preparation of draft laws for the year 2012". The draft law was submitted by the Council of Ministers to the House of Representatives of the National Assembly of the Republic of Belarus on 31 July 2012. The work on the draft law was carried out intensively: it was repeatedly discussed in the Standing Committee of the House of Representatives on Human Rights, National Relations and Mass Media and was sent for the revision. However, despite the repeated revision of the draft law, it, like many other draft legal acts of the Republic of Belarus, was not discussed with a wide range of stakeholders whose activities it is aimed to regulate.

The suggestions on the draft law sent to the parliament by not-for-profit organizations, such as the Legal Transformation Center, were considered to be unpractical. Also, the initiative of 25 not-for-profit organizations to hold parliamentary hearings on the improvement of legislation on not-for-profit organizations on July 16, 2013 was considered to be pointless. Though, the Recommendations on theoretical and methodological basics on the improvement of the legal system of the Republic of Belarus (approved by the Scientific Council of the National Center of Legislation and Legal Research of the Republic of Belarus on 23 April 2013 № 5) constitute that the elaboration of any draft legal act must begin with the analysis of public relations. And it is advisable that this analysis is carried out by several independent agencies, including through the involvement of civil society organizations interested in a specific legal regulation. And right on the eve of the adoption of the draft law in its second reading, the Speaker of the House of Representatives of the National Assembly suggested that MPs should invite representatives of NGOs and international organizations to meetings of the standing committees and working groups.

The importance of considering public opinions during the process of preparation of regulations on the activities of public associations is even bigger if we take into account the fact that the recommendation to improve the conditions for the establishment and activities of not-for-profit organizations was accepted by the Republic of Belarus at the UN Universal Periodic Review of Human Rights in 2010.

Overall, the analysis of the adopted law shows that it contains a number of positive technical changes when compared to the current legislation. At the same time, it has not changed problematic ambiguous provisions. Amendments to the law also did not touch the norms that do not comply with international standards on the freedom of association and on the legal regulation of not-for-profit organizations.

There are not so many innovations made to the law that affect public associations.
The main ones are:

1) The requirements for the founders of local and national public associations have been changed;

2) small changes to the requirements for the documents which are to be submitted for the registration of public associations have been brought; thus, from now on, this list of documents does not include graphical image of organizational structures, the procedure for signing of certain documents has been changed, as well as the source of publication of the notification of registration of a public association;

3) the procedure for the registration of amendments to the charter of a public association has been changed;

4) the procedure for liquidation of public associations has been changed (this norm has undergone the greatest changes).