The Ministry of Justice separated the church from non -profit organizations

According to the instructions of the Government Commission on religious associations, which is headed by the First Deputy Prime Minister of the Russian government Dmitry Medvedev, the Ministry of Justice of Russia prepared and introduced a simplified form of reporting for religious organizations for approval of the government, Kommersant reports today.

As you know, at the end of 2005, amendments to the Law on NPOs were adopted, which require them to be a detailed report on their activities. In particular, according to the Decree of the Government No. 212, all NPOs must provide information about any events and projects to the Federal Registration Service (Fed), as well as indicate the number of people who took part in them; In addition, NPOs are obliged to inform the Fed on the receipt and spending of funds. Together with NPOs, the church also fell under the law. In December last year, the leaders of traditional faiths asked President Putin with a request to mitigate new reporting rules for them. According to their conviction, these rules contradict the constitutions, which states the separation of the church from the state.

As already reported by Kommersant, on March 6, 2007, at a meeting of the Government Commission on religious associations, the Ministry of Justice was given an order to prepare the maximum simplified form of reporting for the church. The Ministry of Justice invited religious organizations to give an account only by four of the nine articles: “main type of activity”, “sources of property formation”, “Information on the expenditure of funds”, “Information on the use of other property received from international and foreign organizations and foreign citizens”. This means that the sources of income and expenses will not be required to indicate in detail from the church, but it will be enough to indicate the total amount of expenses per year. Also, it will not be necessary to indicate how many people came to the service, which they talked about at the diocese meeting, how much and who exactly threw into the church mug. True, religious organizations still have to separately indicate what the funds received from foreign organizations were spent on. At the same time, the reporting deadline was extended until June 1 (the rest of the NPO must provide a report until April 15).

The church was satisfied with the proposals of the Ministry of Justice. “We are satisfied with a new, simplified form of reporting,” the lawyer of the Moscow Patriarchate Ksenia Chernoga told the newspaper. “In principle, what we achieved, we received.” However, representatives of the Protestant churches do not intend to dwell on what has been achieved and are ready to achieve the exclusion of any mention of religious organizations from the 32nd article of the Law on NGOs.

"The reporting of the Church should not be regulated by the Law on NPOs, but by the Law on Freedom of Conscience," Konstantin Bendas, the Office of the Russian United Union of Christians, Konstantin Bendas, told Kommersant. "We hope that we will be able to achieve changes this year."

Representatives of other NPOs also intend to achieve messages. “It is good if the government simplifies reporting for religious organizations,” the head of the Lev Ponomarev, head of the “For Human Rights” movement, told the newspaper. “But we must achieve the complete abolition of new reporting rules for all NPOs.”

“Each organization has the right to apply to the authorized body with a request to simplify the reporting form,” the deputy head of the department for political parties, registration of public, religious and other organizations Galina Fokina told Kommersant. “Only the request should be argued.”