The public functionaries, legal entities and non-residents could be founders, members or managers of noncommercial organizations. The restriction to found NGOs imposed on these categories is lifted by the Law on Noncommercial Organizations whose draft was approved by the executive on March 28. The law allows all private individuals and legal entities, regardless of nationality or organizational form, to found noncommercial organizations, IPN reports.
There are stipulated three forms of noncommercial organizations. The private institution is founded by one private individuals or legal entity. The public association is founded by two or more private individuals or legal entities that are members. If the entity is created by two or more private individuals or legal entities that do not want to have the status of member and delegate the task of managing the entity to a board, this will be a foundation.
Under the Register of Noncommercial Organizations, in Moldova there are about 150 private institutions. Many of these have one founder and will not need to be reorganized. The Register includes over 8,860 public associations, foundations, institutions and unions of legal entities.
The registration of noncommercial organizations, amendments and supplements to their statues will be free, as in the case of religious organizations, and will be managed by the Public Services Agency. The registration period was reduced from 30 to 15 days. The period during which the constitution documents can be presented to the state registration body was increased from 30 days to three months.
The noncommercial organizations will be able to carry out any kind of activity allowed by law, including economic activities, but only in order to achieve statute goals in this case. The distribution of the organization’s profit between founding members and other persons will be banned in a move to prevent the running of economic activities for making profit.
The bill regulates the involvement of noncommercial organizations in activities that are considered political, but offers them the right to state their opinion on the programs of parties and on election runners and their programs in elections. The noncommercial organizations cannot directly or indirectly support parties financially and cannot provide free services for them.
The bill was drafted during two years. In this connection, Prime Minister Pavel Filip said the variant approved by the Government will probably not enjoy a general consensus either, but welcomed the fact that the situation was unblocked. The bill is to be examined and adopted by Parliament.
