Parliament Concludes Debate on NGO Bill

Bratislava, April 23 (TASR) - Parliament ended a debate on the legislation regulating NGOs on Tuesday. Submitted by coalition's SNS party, the bill proposes to designate all NGOs receiving more than €5,000 from abroad annually as "organisations with foreign support". The bill will also introduce the duty to submit more extensive annual reports for NGOs and publish information on all donors, contributors and gift providers whose contributions exceed €5,000 annually. This, in SNS's view, is necessary to ensure higher level of transparency and responsibility in the financing of NGOs. The bill caught flak from the opposition, which insists that the legislation will impugn NGOs and "ostracise" them. In addition, the bill might also fly in the face of the Slovak Constitution and the European law. "It's a legal deformity. The bill is in discord with the Constitution, in discord with the EU law and, in essence, doesn't bring anything good or valuable," noted MP Zuzana Stevulova (PS) in the debate. In her opinion, the existing financing of NGOs is sufficiently transparent and its public supervision adequate. mf/mcs