Update 12.50pm
A small group of NGOs has distanced itself from proposals made by a civil society council to reform controversial charity laws and said it will report the matter to the Council of Europe.
The organisations that form the Volontarjat Action Group say the proposals, submitted by the Malta Council for the Voluntary Sector last week, do not satisfy the minimum standards needed for NGOs to function properly.
While the MCVS proposals call for laws brought into force without consultation to be amended, the VAG says the legal notice introducing them should be completely revoked and redrafted from scratch.
The MCVS submitted a 27-page document detailing a raft of changes to the controversial new laws last week, following warnings from across civil society that new rules and regulations would make it impossible for small NGOs to operate.
The council document listed more than 140 organisations that it said had taken part in consultation sessions to draft those proposals. That list included Din L-Art Ħelwa, Repubblika, Richmond Foundation, SPCA Gozo and Soċjetà Mużikali San Ġużepp - the five NGOs that form the newly-created VAG.
But organisations making up the VAG say that the council's proposals are unworkable and did not solve the key problems with the legislation introduced by the government.
The legal notice, VAG said, requires NGOs to obtain a permit to fundraise, and the MCVS was in favour of NGOs seeking a permit each year. That would deprive civil society organisations of crucial right that could not be up for discussion, the newly-formed group said.
The group pointed out that legally, a legal notice cannot be suspended and that therefore the Commissioner for Voluntary Organisations did not have the legal discretion to not enforce its provisions.
VAG said it would be alerting the Council of Europe to the threat being posed to NGOs and, as a consequence, the breach of the right to association.
It called for meaningful consultation and said people in the voluntary sector should not be viewed with suspicion by the authorities when they wanted the best for the country.
The organisation urged any other NGOs with similar concerns to get in touch with it.