Russian Anti-NGO Law in Czechia

Some Members of Parliament in Czechia seem to want to copy an infamous Russian law aimed against NGOs. Jindřich Rajchl, elected on the ballot of the far-right SPDparty, proudly stands behind this initiative. An investigation by the news outlet Seznam Zprávy revealed that Natálie Vachatová is the author of the draft bill. It is presented as a measure to increase transparency in the funding of nonprofit organizations. In reality, however, it is part of a broader trend of legislative measures that have emerged in several countries in recent years, all of which aim to restrict the space for civil society and independent public debate.

In a twist of Orwellian newspeak, Natálie Vachatová, the ostensible author of this bill, has a government job entitled Advisor to the Prime Minister for Free Speech. She was previously employed by an outfit called Society for the Defense of Freedom of Expression, co-founded and financed by Daniel Vávra, a Czech alt-right internet troll and the lead developer of the Mafia and Kingdom Come gaming franchises. Natálie Vachatová was also revealed to have significant connections to and affections for the Russian regime.

Totalitarian Inspiration

Similar laws have been enacted, for example, in Russia, Hungary, Kyrgyzstan, and Georgia—countries that rank far behind the Czech Republic in democracy and freedom indices. Therefore, any legislative inspiration drawn from these countries should serve as a warning sign.

To compare the countries, we selected three reputable sources: The Democracy Index by the Economist Intelligence Unit, the Human Freedom Index by the Cato Institute, and the Freedom in the World index by Freedom House. Despite their differing criteria, all three agree on the relative ranking of freedom in the selected countries. It is noteworthy that in the two least unfree countries, similar proposals were overturned. In Slovakia, this was done by its own Constitutional Court; in the case of Hungary, the Court of Justice of the European Union had to intervene. It should be noted that the data on which the rankings are based is delayed, so they do not reflect the most recent changes in the situation, which is particularly relevant in the case of Georgia.

Table 1: The State of Freedom and Democracy in Countries with anti-NGO laws

Russia, Kyrgyzstan, Georgia, Hungary, and Slovakia justified the need for such legislation in almost the same way as the sponsors of the Czech bill: the need to protect the state from foreign influence and to increase the transparency of organizations that receive funding from abroad. However, practice has shown that their actual effect was different. These legislative measures have gradually become a tool for stigmatizing civil society organizations, restricting their funding, and creating an environment of mistrust toward any institution not under the state’s direct control.

“We have firsthand experience of what happens when the state labels an independent organization a threat simply because it cooperates with foreign partners. This happens in dictatorships and authoritarian regimes – in Russia, Belarus, Venezuela, Azerbaijan, Kyrgyzstan, and other countries that we would come closer to by adopting a similar law. Anyone who says they don’t want Putin’s influence in the Czech Republic should be the first to reject copying Putin’s law. The Russian register of foreign agents today includes scientists, journalists, environmentalists – or the organization Memorial, which has documented the victims of Stalin’s gulags for 30 years,” said Tomáš Urban, spokesperson for People in Need.

In all the aforementioned countries, it has been said that the actual inspiration for these anti-NGO laws is actually the US Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA). Miroslava Pavlíková and Miroslav Mareš, two academics at the Czech Masaryk University have reached the conclusion that this is unsupported by the facts, describing the differences between the Russian and American approaches in an academic article published in 2017:

“We can state that the most significant difference between the two laws is their application to nongovernmental organizations,” they note. “Political activities [in the Russian law] are defined quite broadly, so the law’s application also extends to non-governmental organizations that seek to monitor the electoral system or human rights compliance. An illustration of this difference is the human rights organization Amnesty International, which operates in both countries; while it is not listed in the registry in the US, it is registered as a foreign agent in the Russian Federation.”

The Institute for Liberal Studies will publish a full report on the topic this month.