On May 19, the Belarusian government submitted the draft law On State Registration and Liquidation (Termination of Activities) of Economic Entities to the parliament. Developed by the Ministry of Justice, the law is intended to replace the Presidential Decree No. 1 of 2009, which currently regulates these issues. This legislative update is not a true reform, but rather a technicality in line with replacing all decrees by laws due to the 2022 amendments to the Constitution, which removed the "decree" as a special type of legal act issued by the president alone from legislation.
Different laws for different types of CSOs
The proposed bill, like the current decree, will regulate issues of state registration and liquidation of a wide range of legal entities, including thousands of non-commercial organisations (NCOs), including institutions, unions of legal entities, consumer cooperatives, and gardeners’ communities. The registration and liquidation of other forms of NCOs, such as foundations, public associations, political parties, religious organisations, and trade unions will continue to be regulated by separate laws with stricter procedures. The new law will not correct the inequality of different forms of CSOs in the registration process.
However, the bill contains some significant novelties that affect those forms of NCOs which it applies to.
Mandatory email address for official communication and e-form for registration
The draft law introduces the concept of the official email of a legal entity which must be specified during regustration. The registration of an organisation without specifying an e-mail address will be impossible. The organisation bears the risk of the consequences for not receiving legally significant messages sent to its registered address or to the email address specified in the Unified State Register of Legal Entities. Legal entities will be required to submit a notification of changes of the official email within ten business days next to the already existing obligation to report a change in legal address, appointment of a new chief executive, and the start of the reorganisation procedure.
The bill establishes the filing and submitting of an application for registration of a legal entity in the online form on the web-portal of a state agency. Even if the founders want to submit the registration package in-person, the printed completed online form with reference number must be attached to package of documents for registration. It will be impossible to submit documents for registration through regular mail on paper.
No paper registration certificates and standard charters
The bill will abolish state registration certificates for legal entities - after registration, founders will receive a charter with a stamp. Instead of a paper record, all information on the legal status of an economic entity, its actual organisational and legal form, and name will be available on the Unified State Register of Legal Entities portal.
While commercial organisations can take advantage of registering under a standard charter, this novelty of the draft law is not yet available to NCOs, as the government has not yet approved these charters.
Special grounds for the termination of a CSO
The bill contains a special norm on compulsory liquidation, allowing the registering authority to liquidate two types of NCOs (institutions and unions of legal entities) if they engage in activities that do not align with the goals stated in their charters. It is thus a continuation of the trend of arbitrary liquidations prevalent in Belarus.
The bill does not provide for a similar norm either for commercial or all other NCOs covered by the draft law (consumer cooperatives, gardeners’ communities).
The context of the new bill
Earlier in 2019, a draft of a similar law was submitted for official public discussion to replace the current decree, and 31 proposals were received. The draft was introduced to the parliament, but was later withdrawn at government’s own initiative.
This time, in 2025, there has been no public discussion yet. Instead, the authors of the bill limited discussions to individual norms of the draft in a more closed format at the Public Advisory (Expert) Council under the Ministry of Justice.
The 2019 version was much more progressive and reformed problematic legal provisions. For example, it abolished a separate preliminary procedure for obtaining approval for the name of a legal entity separately from the procedure for filing documents for its registration. The 2025 bill maintains this two-step procedure, which significantly complicates and delays the process of obtaining registration.
Some drawbacks of the 2019 draft law have been retained in the 2025 version. For example, the norm on maintaining the Unified Register of Legal Entities only in one of the state languages has remained unchanged, which, given the two state languages in Belarus, will constantly mean discrimination against one of the language communities. Currently, the Unified Register of Legal Entities is maintained in Russian, which restricts the rights of its Belarusian-speaking users. Search options in the register are also only available in Russian, which makes it impossible to check and compare the names of legal entities for discrepancies with already registered organisations, causing difficulties with the registration of newly established legal entities, including CSOs.
The proponents of the draft law expect it to be adopted in the near future and suppose that the document will come into force in a year after its publication. Legal entities registered before the law comes into force are required to bring their charters into compliance with the new provisions of the law when making the first amendments to it. This approach is more flexible than the one used in 2023–2024 for public associations, political parties, and religious organisations, which were given deadlines to re-register or update their charters.
The bill contains a large number of reference norms, authorising the government to develop procedures for approval of legal entities' names, approving model charters, determining the procedure for processing electronic documents, etc. Broad regulatory competences are also granted to the Ministry of Justice, which implements the general policy in the field of registration and liquidation of legal entities, establishes forms of documents, sets requirements for the names of legal entities, and determine the procedure for maintaining the Unified Register of Legal Entities.