The Czech ruling coalition has drafted a bill aimed at curtailing non-governmental organisation (NGO) activities in the country.

Critics of the bill say it imitates Russian legislation aimed at restricting the activities of NGOs, initially via the Foreign Agents Law and later expanded. Several other countries in the region including Georgia and EU members Hungary and Slovakia have since put forward similar legislation. 

The draft contains formulations such as need to counter “risk of covert or undeclared foreign influence” and penalising NGOs by up to CZK15mn (€614,000), or a five-year-ban on “foreign ties” in the event NGOs failed to register and provide details of foreign links, including funding and employee details.

Online news outlet Seznam Zprávy (SZ), which reported first on the draft bill, referring to a digital document it examined, noted that the loose definitions which the draft contains could affect the Catholic Church, universities which are part of international research, or even the country’s municipalities as these are recipients of EU funding.   

The anti-NGO and anti-green rhetoric of the Czech government officials caused an outcry among the country’s liberals, who are sensitive to democratic backsliding after seeing similar developments in neighbouring Slovakia. 

“We have direct experience with what happens when the state labels an independent organisation as a threat just because it cooperates with international partners,” Tomáš Urban, spokesperson of the largest Czech NGO Man in Need, which is active in humanitarian aid in more than 40 countries worldwide, told SZ.

“Anyone who does not want [Russian President Vladimir] Putin’s influence in Czechia should be the first to refuse to copy paste Putin’s bill,” he said, in reference to Babiš’ commitment to uphold Czechia’s EU membership and observe the bloc’s policies.

“Political NGOs”

However, members of the ruling coalition have defended the legislation. “We are preparing it [the bill] primarily as legislators and I am proudly part of it,” Jindřich Rajchl, chairman of the radical rightwing PRO party elected on the SPD list was quoted as saying by SZ.

Rajchl, who argued that the bill aims at greater “transparency” of NGOs, also told SZ that “citizens of the Czech Republic should know that there are organisations and entities active here which do not represent their interest, but an interest of financial groups behind those”. He declined to provide more details apart from defining these as “political NGOs”.

“It should be a legislators draft bill,” Rajchl aded to SZ, which noted that in such a case the draft bill does not have to be consulted by relevant public experts, as would have been the case had a government ministry drafted the bill.

According to SZ, the prime minister’s aide for freedom of speech Natálie Vachatová took part in the drafting of the controversial bill alongside legislators from billionaire Prime Minister Andrej Babiš populist Ano party, and its coalition partners far-right Freedom and Direct Democracy (SPD), and the anti-green and Eurosceptic Motorists for Themselves.

SZ’ reporting sparked wide attention in the Czech media, including criticism of Vachatová’s links to Russia through her brother Fedor Vachata, who runs a debt-collecting business in Russia, according to the Czech Kremlin analyst Roman Máca.

Vachatová told SZ she had only “consulted the material”, and that she is not the author of the bill despite the digital footprint leading to her computer. 

Plans to slash funding 

The Ano party joined forces with SPD and Motorists for Themselves after winning the October general election to the country’s parliament, where the parties have a comfortable majority with 108 seats.

The cabinet’s programme signaled it wants to slash state funding for NGOs, and the Czech expert community already condemned plans to cut foreign and humanitarian aid programmes by approximately half, announced by Minister of Foreign Affairs Petr Macinka of the Motorists as part of an austerity drive.

In parallel, the Babiš government announced cuts to the funding of cultural institutions and literary magazines, which drove thousands of students to the streets in Prague in protest on March 11.

Civic platform Million Moments for Democracy, which was behind the 2018-2019 mass protests against Babiš’ previous cabinet, held anti-government protests in more than 400 Czech cities and towns on February 15, and announced a mass rally at the Letná plateau scheduled on March 21.

Similar legislation has been adopted elsewhere in the region. A Russian-style NGO bill aimed at political opponents drove the Hungarian government of Viktor Orbán into a further conflict with the EU over rule of law.

Last April, Slovak PM Robert Fico’s left-right government also passed the NGO bill, which opposition and anti-graft watchdogs criticised as a local version of the Russian anti-NGO bill aimed at silencing critics, and the country’s Constitutional Court struck down parts of it incompatible with Slovak Constitution earlier this year.