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Deadline for submission of proposals for amendments to the Draft Law on Not-for-profit organizations

The Draft Law on Amending and Supplementing to the Law on not-for-profit legal entities is published for public discussion on the website for public consultations –  www.strategy.bg.

The deadline for proposal submission is 19 December 2014.

The Draft Law consist proposal for amendments in several main areas.

  • Regulations on the membership and functions of the Council for Development of Civil Society as a consultative body to the Council of Ministers

The Council is stipulated to be one of the measures for establishing a working partnership between the state and the civil society organizations, planned in the Strategy for supporting development of the civil society organizations adopted by the Government in the end of 2012.
According to the proposals of the Ministry of Justice the main functions of the Council are to make statements on draft legislation, strategies and programs, which are related to the civil society organizations activities, to monitor the implementation of the measures provided in the Strategy and update it periodically, as well as to collect information on the activities and status of civil society organizations on the basis of which to prepare a periodic assessment of their needs.
Equal representatives from the government and the civil society organizations are proposed to take part in the Council. The specific mechanism for determining the representatives of NGOs in the Council is stipulated to be further regulated by the Rules of Organization and Procedure of the Council

  • Regulation of the activities and the management of the Civil society organizations Development Fund

The establishment of the Fund is again part of the implementation of the measures in the Strategy and aims to support achieving financial sustainability of the civil society organizations in Bulgaria. In the end of 2012 the Government adopted a separate document – Vision that regulates the priorities, structure and functions of the Fund.
According to the Ministry of Justice proposals the Fund will be managed by Board of directors in which equal number of government and non-government organizations’ representatives will take part, and an Executive director.
The representatives of the civil society sector in the Board are stipulated to be selected on the basis of transparent and competitive procedure for nomination and election, described in details in the Rules of the Fund.
The Budget of the Fund is set to be formed by annual subsidy from the state, part of the property taken by the Commission for deprivation of illegally acquired property, donations and other grants acquired by funding programs.
An Activity Program of the Fund and its strategic priorities is stipulated to be annually adopted in which the funding of the civil society organizations’ initiatives is stipulated to be on competitive basis.

  • Simplifying the procedure for registration and reporting of legal not-for-profit public benefit organizations in the Central Register of NGOs at the Ministry of Justice

The concrete proposals in this area are related to reducing the number of documents needed to be submitted for registration and subsequent reporting of NGOs. It is planned the court of registration of organizations to send ex officio decisions for registration and changes on cases of not-for profit public benefit organizations. These changes on the one hand aimed at reducing the administrative burden and bureaucracy of the procedure before the CR, but would also lead to a reduction of the related registration costs in the Central Registry for individual organizations.

  • Possibility for on-line registration of public benefit organizations in the CR  to facilitate the access of the organizations to the Register

For the first time since the adopting of the the Strategy for supporting development of the civil society organizations one of its measures is reaching this stage of implementation (with the exception of the draft Law of Volunteering which managed to reach Plenary Hall in the Parliament). The initiative of the Ministry of Justice is a positive indicator that the state institutions in Bulgaria are still willing to face the commitments they have about the civil society. Furthermore, the graft law gives us the hope that Bulgarian NGOs will have the chance to realize their initiatives in an environment that determines their independence and financial sustainability, as it happens in many other near and distant European countries (Croatia, Czech Republic, Hungary, Estonia etc.)