After civil society's outcry, the Commission has decided to postpone the presentation of a directive on “common transparency and accountability standards for interest representation services directed or paid for from outside the EU” included in its Defence of Democracy initiative. The law would impose new restrictions on CSOs that receive funding from third countries.
The Commission will now first carry out a preliminary full impact assessment of the new rules. This decision mirrors ECNL’s main request in our submission to the Commission's online call for evidence. As we highlighted:
"Any obligation to disclose funding (in the form of registration, declaration, labelling or publication) imposed on not-for-profit organisations directly or indirectly, constitutes an interference with the right to freedom of association protected by Article 12 of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights."
The proposal, as summarily described in the call of evidence itself, if applied to civil society organisations (CSOs) could affect their ability to seek and receive resources (due to possible stigmatisation as “foreign interest representative”), disrupt lawful activities (funders not wanting negative perception) or unduly restrict the free movement of capital.
Therefore, we urged the Commission, in consultation with CSOs and the Fundamental Rights Agency of the EU, to conduct a formal impact assessment to:
- justify the strict necessity of CSOs to be included in the definition of “interest representation services directed or paid for from outside the EU”;
- assess if the level of interference imposed is strictly necessary and proportionate; and
- identify other measures (including self-regulatory) that may be promoted to fulfil similar aims in less intrusive manner.
We further reiterated our call on 10 May 2023 at the Commission DG JUST seminar focusing on the protection of CSOs and human rights defenders from the challenges they face when working in the EU. And together with 230 organisations led by Civil Society Europe, we outlined our concerns that the directive puts civil society at risk in a joint statement.
As a next step, together with our partners we look forward to engaging in a meaningful and constructive consultation with the European Commission as it embarks upon analysing the possible impact of the directive.