Law on foreign agents is not repressive – Naryshkin

(Interfax – MOSCOW, June 20, 2013) Russian State Duma Speaker Sergei Naryshkin believes it is important that society should understand that the legislation on NGOs is not restrictive in nature and the state is interested in increasing the number of NGOs and their unimpeded work.

“As for NGOs, it is, of course, important that society should understand that the law (on foreign agents) is not restrictive or repressive in nature,” Naryshkin said during a meeting with Russian Justice Minister Alexander Konovalov.

“Of course, we are interested in increasing civil society institutions and we want NGOs to work freely and become more numerous,” Naryshkin said.

Konovalov, in turn, said the legislation does not restrict the work of NGOs and sanctions are only used on NGOs that violate the regulations.

He also believes the criteria for conducting extraordinary inspections should be the same for ordinary NGOs and for “foreign agents.”

“Now, there are more grounds (for inspections of) organizations that have the status of so-called foreign agents. We believe it is probably not quite correct to make specific categories of legal entities, we believe it is more correct to use a more general approach,” Konovalov said.