The Civil Law Status of Social Movements

 The need to improve legislation in the field of regulating relations involving public associations has been overdue for a long time. The solution of problematic issues will contribute to a more effective and unhindered exercise of the right to association. Currently, social movements and public organizations do not belong to the same organizational and legal form of non-profit organizations. Nevertheless, there is no consensus in the doctrine of civil law as to how justified this approach is. The objectives of the creation are named as the peculiarities of the social movement, as well as the fact that, unlike the public organization, the participants of the social movement do not acquire the right of membership. They just support the objectives of its creation and operation. At the same time, the analysis of the charters of many social movements shows that their participants, as a rule, fix their participation in the social movement by submitting individual applications, going through the registration and accounting procedures, which eliminates the difference with the status of members in a public organization. In addition, the concepts of participation and membership in civil legislation are usually identified, while in the legislation on public associations their status differs depending on whether there is a procedure for formalizing participation or not. It seems that the lack of certainty in the legal status of social movements as legal entities is connected not only with the revealed contradictions in the laws that regulate it, but also with the fact that the civil law doctrine has not developed a unified approach to determining the category of organizational and legal form of legal entities. The issue concerning sufficiency of highlighting the specifics of the creation objectives for the formation of certain types of legal entities still needs resolution.

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