The Verkhovna Rada with a majority of 334 (the minimum needed was 226) has passed in its second reading and in full draft Law No. 7262 on Civic Organizations.

The Law defines civic organizations as voluntary association of individuals and / or legal entities in private law in order to protect rights and freedoms; satisfy economic; social; cultural; environmental or other interests.

The removal of the previous restriction allowing protection of the rights of members exclusively will make it possible for civic organizations to be more effective in carrying out awareness-raising activities, providing legal assistance and other socially useful forms of activity.

It is stipulated that civic organizations are non-profit-making.

Another restriction has now been removed and civic organizations have the right to function over the entire country.

Other changes:

simplification of State registration of civic organizations;

regulations on scrutiny over the activities of civic organizations being brought into line with European standards;

simplification of economic activities of civic organizations in order to carry out their statutory objectives.

The Law states that civic organizations with legal entity status can carry out business activities not only though the enterprises they create, but also directly if such activities comply with the aims of the civic organization and promote their achievement.

Registration of an organization is free of charge, but fees are taken for making amendments to articles of association, issuing duplications of the certificate confirming registration or articles of association.

The grounds for refusing to register a civic organization are restricted and the time period for registration reduced to 7 working days.  The civic organizations can choose to have legal entity status or not

The division of civic organizations into local, all-Ukrainian and international should now be redundant with the organizations able to determine the territory of their activities, carrying them out over the whole country, without re-registration.

Any organization can confirm its status as “all-Ukrainian” on condition that there are territorial subdivisions in most regions, or they can reject such status.

There is also an exhaustive list of the grounds allowed for dissolving a civic organization.