Reform of Legislative Environment for Civil Society Development in Ukraine

Key objectives include enabling social entrepreneurship and government financial aid for civic initiatives, ordering social services from civil society and charity organizations, and providing opportunities for citizens' engagement in policy-making at any level. The agenda also seeks to secure freedom of peaceful assembly. To legitimize CSOs, the suggested solutions include reducing the registration duration for all types of CSOs, establishing a single point of contact for registering all types of CSOs and obtaining non-profit status, and registering CSOs at administrative services centers. For taxation of charity and civil society activism, the proposed solutions involve reducing tax liabilities for charitable assistance to individuals, canceling taxation of charitable SMS, raising the amount of tax-free non-targeted charitable assistance to the subsistence level, and introducing tax benefits for individuals and companies supporting non-profit organizations. The agenda also focuses on supporting social entrepreneurship and government financial aid to civic initiatives. Proposed solutions include entitling charity organizations to compete for obtaining government financial aid to social projects, providing for mandatory inclusion of expenditures on financial aid in national and local budgets, and prescribing competitive procedures for allocating government financial aid to CSOs' programs and projects. Additionally, the agenda suggests introducing competitive procedures for selecting executors of national and local target programs, and providing for CSOs participation in respective competitions. Furthermore, the National Civic Agenda aims to engage CSOs and charity organizations in providing social services at the expense of public funds. Proposed solutions include switching to the system of social services ordering (procurement) from non-governmental entities, developing and adopting national quality standards for social services, and stipulating the list of social services necessarily financed at the expense of public funds. The agenda also suggests defining criteria and procedures for government inspections and public reporting of social services providers of any ownership and subordination type, and removing individual income tax from the cost of social services provided by CSOs and charity organizations to citizens at the expense of national or local budget. The agenda also addresses the issue of protecting freedom of peaceful assembly. Proposed solutions include defining duties of the state regarding protection of freedom of peaceful assembly, setting an exhaustive list of grounds to limit and ban peaceful assemblies, granting possibility of holding spontaneous assemblies, counter-assemblies, and concurrent assemblies, and abolishing local procedures for holding peaceful assemblies set by the resolutions of local governments. Finally, the National Civic Agenda aims to provide civil society engagement in policy-making and administering at any level. Proposed solutions include adopting the statute and provisions on citizens' engagement mechanisms in each territorial community, introducing e-petitioning, enabling expert commissions establishment at the local councils, and adopting budget regulation to involve citizens in the budget formulation. The agenda also suggests covering the information on local budgetary funds use in a comprehensible manner at the local council official website, enabling publication of the information on budgetary funds use by the local councils at the Edata, single web-portal for public funds use, and introducing a provision on civic engagement budget to involve citizens in prioritizing public funds spending.