After today's session of the Committee for Human Rights and Freedoms and the withdrawal of the Proposal for the Law on Amendments to the Law on Non-Governmental Organizations, the Open Platform expresses the hope that the withdrawal of this proposal by the relevant ministry means the readiness to reach a rational solution that is acceptable and that ensures the development of the sector and financing of activities that are of public interest and carried out by the non-governmental sector, said Igor Milošević from ADP "Zid" in front of the Open Platform.
"It is bad that this law has been dragged out for more than two years through public debates that in no way serve to obtain proposals and arguments from various groups of non-governmental organizations that would make this legal act of higher quality, but rather to impose solutions that may be operationally and fundamentally difficult the basis for high-quality intersectoral cooperation. On the contrary, we believe that they can only be the basis for a deeper confrontation. Pressured by the effort to end the process of crushing the civil sector, the Open Platform, through its own working group, proposed a solution that can come close to a compromise within the civil sector and be feasible and useful for what the civil sector exists for - articulating the needs of citizens, offering solutions to problems and citizens' participation in the implementation of the proposed solutions. An NGO that will be functional, applicable and respond to the needs of the actors it applies to, and are in line with good examples from comparative practice," said Miloševi.
He added that the corrections to the Law proposed by the "Open Platform" would ensure a long-term and high-quality solution that would ensure the development of citizen participation and respond to the needs of the non-governmental sector's contribution to the development and functioning of the community.
"This is the interest of both institutions and citizens and NGOs that represent their interests to a significant extent. The non-affirmative environment in which non-governmental organizations are located can lead to a decrease in the quality of life of citizens in Montenegro, the absence of democratic principles of functioning, monitoring and improvement of public policies ", the announcement states.
Milošević said that the Open Platform proposed a solution that reserves the right to all public and local administration bodies to participate in priority programming with cooperation and financing in consultation with NGOs, but also offered a state foundation whose work would be regulated by a special legal act that would contain most of the provisions that are currently inconsistent, such as the need for commissions, criteria for independent evaluators, the number of competitions, the way NGOs participate in monitoring the process of cooperation and financing of projects, programs and services.
"What is new in the proposed amendment is the method of financing - instead of allocating according to the % model from the current budget, it was proposed that funds for financing projects, programs and services of non-governmental organizations be secured from real budget revenues - from the aggregate amount of income tax on employees and hired in non-governmental organizations paid by NGOs during the year preceding the year in which the calculation is made and 50% of the total amount of concession fees from games of chance for the same period of time," said Milošević.
He added that in addition to this, a number of other solutions were proposed:
- "a) Register of NGOs that will be in the function of monitoring development parameters, at least the part that expresses readiness to receive funds from the budget, but also a database that will facilitate administrative tasks for non-governmental organizations, all in accordance with the Strategy for the Development of NGOs;
- b) Clear instructions for establishing cooperation and financing of the non-profit sector by public companies;
- c) Flexibility in enabling income-generating activities aimed at the sustainability of non-governmental organizations;
- d) Existence of a clear address in the form of a Ministry that will advocate for horizontal communication and realizing the interests of citizens and the non-governmental sector in policies that are not under the line ministry (tax policy and incentives, measuring the impact of the non-profit sector, use of space, etc.);
The civil sector does not need a standardized legal solution, especially in the segment of solutions that have not been tested, but solutions that would be changeable through the drafting of new legal and extra-legal acts in accordance with practice," Milošević concluded.
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