Updates

The first dedicated programme creates a formalised channel of state support for volunteering, one of the most trusted pillars of civic life and wartime resilience.

The single national programme and its public, digital monitoring is a transparency gain civil society can use for watchdog work, provided that the new system measures the quality of reforms and not just their quantity.

A fast-tracked rewrite of Ukraine's Civil Code has cleared its first reading and several of its provisions could expose civil society organisations and journalists to new legal pressure, clashing with the country's EU accession commitments.

The draft law from March has been substantially weakened, removing key judicial appeal mechanisms and reducing accountability to individual disciplinary measures, resulting in g a law that authorities can ignore with near impunity.

Pressure on freedoms of expression and assembly continues to grow.

Displaced Artsakh resident Arthur Osipyan was detained and prosecuted following a heated exchange with the PM. He is currently on hunger strike, the civil society's prison monitoring group has been unable to visit him.

Draft amendments to the Tax Code can strengthen financial sustainability and public accountability of CSOs and media by enabling reimbursable citizen donations; the effectiveness will depend on secondary regulation and implementation details.

Belarus is pushing legal entities to switch from Gmail (or other foreign-based emails) to domestic services. While the new law has not yet entered into force, the practice of requiring an “official organisational email” has already started.

The recent amendments aim to strengthen legal clarity and information security, but raise concerns about the scope of regulation, proportionality, and potential impact on media freedom.

While the law is an important step, CSOs warn that a key commitment to protect human rights defenders' risks being quietly absorbed into a narrower legislative instrument instead of the dedicated law the Government promised.

Recent tax code changes give authorities the right to verify if a legal entity is located at its registered legal address and the power to suspend transactions on its accounts and e-wallets if not.

Authorities continue to crack down on protesters and journalists, recent amendments do little to reduce restrictions.