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2010 Archives

25-11-2010.
New Law On Foundations

On November, 23rd, 2010 Serbian Assembly adopted Law on foundations, which has for its goal the creation of legal framework which would be encouraging for the development of foundations, and their transparent business and management.

Balkan Community Initiatives Fund (BCIF), in cooperation with European Center for Non-for-Profit Law (ECNL) and Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Serbia, has actively participated in preparing the preliminary draft version of Law on foundations. The process of making the preliminary draft version lasted a year and a half, and included 16 meetings of the Work group, two Commission meetings, one public discussion, four regional public discussions (Novi Sad, Valjevo, Kragujevac, and Niš) and a major closing public discussion in Belgrade.

The final version of the preliminary draft was made on the basis of the documents which had been approved by the Commission in June, 2008, along with amendments implemented on the basis of the comments of a great number of citizens and representatives of foundations, nongovernmental organizations, institutions which were gathered during the process of extensive public discussion, which was being held from September, 2008 to February, 2009. Draft document of the Law, along with accompanying documentation, was delivered to Ministry of Culture which took further steps in adopting the Law, in cooperation with Ministries, the Government and the Parliament.

We believe that the adoption of the new Law will significantly improve the work of the already existing funds and foundations, and that the Law will at the same time encourage the development and founding of new funds, attributing to the revival of the philanthropic culture in Serbia.

We would like to thank for their devoted and dedicated work to all the members of the Commission and the Work group, who invested the time and effort in order for us to reach this important document, to all the participants of the public discussions on their constructive comments, and to our partners in organizing public discussions: Provincial Secretariat for Culture of Autonomous Province of Vojvodina, Niš municipality Medijana, Local Government of Valjevo, Local Government of Kragujevac, Local Government of Belgrade, Agency for Cooperation with NGOS and European Harmonization, National Bank of Serbia.

Moreover, we thank Ministry of Culture for constructive cooperation, and we believe that the process of making the new Law may serve as a good example of successful cooperation between the Ministry and the nongovernmental sector in the field of legislation.

The initiative for making the new Law on foundations was started by Center for Improving Legal Studies (CUPS), and BCIF’s further efforts to bring the initiative to its end has been supported by: British Embassy in Belgrade within the project “Creating encouraging environment for the development of civil society organizations in Serbia”, United States Agency for International Development/Institute for Sustainable Communities (USAID/ISC) with the program “Initiative for public advocacy of the civil society in Serbia”, as well as Fund for an Open Society.

Text of Law on foundations, as well as the appropriate explanation, may be downloaded here:

Text of Law on Foundations.pdf

Explanation of Law on Foundations.pdf

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