Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2010-09-08-Speech-3-285"
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"en.20100908.15.3-285"2
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"Mr President, civil society organisations play a vital role in open and democratic societies. Israel has an unquestionable tradition of a free, open, and vibrant civil society playing a positive role in many sectors, including monitoring human rights, both in Israel and in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, as well as highlighting environmental and cultural issues.
The EU has been cooperating with Israeli non-governmental organisations for many years and has a keen interest in continuing this fruitful cooperation, in particular, since many Israeli NGOs have a reputation for professional excellence in their fields. This is why we followed with concern the debate in the Knesset on the bill on the ‘disclosure of funding from abroad’. We have made these concerns clearly known to the Israeli authorities on many occasions.
As spelled out in the Commission’s European Neighbourhood Policy Progress Report, the first version of the bill, last February, contained new requirements on the activities of civil society that – if adopted – would have substantially hampered NGO work in Israel.
A new and substantially revised version of the bill was discussed during the summer by members of the Knesset, the government and civil society representatives. In August, a new draft was adopted at first reading in the Knesset.
In the latest draft bill, provisions removing tax exemptions for NGOs and including an obligation to register in the political parties’ register have been shelved. These are certainly very welcome changes.
However, in our view, the reporting obligations imposed on NGOs would still become unnecessarily stringent, not least because the current administrative requirements for NGOs in Israel already ensure adequate transparency of public funding. Furthermore, these new transparency criteria would only cover public funding from abroad, while private foreign sources would not need to be disclosed – as has quite rightly been underscored. That approach would discriminate against those working with foreign public funding, including from the EU.
In the ENP Action Plan, Israel and the European Union have agreed to engage in a regular dialogue on civil society issues and to promote Israel-EU links between civil society. The latest EU-Israel working group on human rights met on 2 September, and also discussed in detail the issue of NGO funding.
The bill will go through further discussions and readings in the Knesset in the coming months. We will continue to follow developments closely."@en1
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