🤔Are you waiting for an answer to register your foundation?
If the Registry of Foundations has not responded to your request within the established deadline, don’t worry! There is a legal mechanism that can help you continue with the process: administrative silence.
What is administrative silence?
Administrative silence is a legal mechanism designed to protect citizens from administrative inaction. It is applied when an authority does not respond within the legally established term to an application, petition or appeal of the administered parties.
Its main objective is to prevent you from being left in a situation of legal uncertainty and to ensure that you can continue with the process. It is a figure, as the doctrinaire Sánchez Morón explains, that brings legal certainty to administrative processes.
✅There are two types of…
How to apply administrative silence to a foundation?
Law 39/2015, on Common Administrative Procedure, establishes that administrative silence will be positive unless otherwise provided by law. In the case of statewide foundations, the exception is given by Royal Decree-Law 5/2023 which amends Law 50/02 on Foundations. This establishes that, in the case of acts that can be registered in the Register of Foundations, administrative silence is negative after the expiration of the term.
👉 Not all foundations are covered by these regulations…
- To find out if the same applies to a community foundation, we invite you to review the corresponding legislation of each Autonomous Community.
- Banking and religious foundations have their own particular legislation governing their registration. While banking foundations are governed by the Law of Foundations, and their registration is also governed by negative silence, religious foundations, which are governed by the regime of the Public Administrations and the Common Administrative Procedure, are governed by positive silence.
📅 The deadline has passed… What do I do?
The maximum time limit for the registration of foundations at the state level to complete the registration of a foundation is 6 months. If you do not receive a response, request a certificate of silence from the Registry of Foundations to make the situation official.
Important: Follow-up is key!
Administrative silence does not apply automatically: you must request certification in order to challenge the decision or learn that the deadline is suspended because the Protectorate’s report has not been received by the registry.
At this point, the most important thing is to find out if the Protectorate has had any inconvenience with the issuance of its report, both through the contact channels of the Registry of Foundations and directly with the Protectorate.
In addition, realistically plan your foundation’s expectations, communicating them to trustees, potential donors and collaborators to adjust timelines in relation to the development of projects, events and programs. In the meantime, you can move forward in realizing policies, such as equality or anti-corruption plans, and plan the first actions of the foundation.
👉 Fun fact for jurists…
At the time the law states that there is negative silence for acts that can be registered in the Registry of Foundations, it does not give exclusivity to the registry to be the one who causes such silence, and the Protectorate may internally, as part of the registration process, be the one who, due to its lack of internal response to the registry, causes the registry not to respond to the interested party, thus generating the rejection of the administrative silence.
📝 We are here to help you
At The Lighthouse Team we understand how daunting these procedures can be. Our team is ready to help you every step of the way, from completing all the necessary paperwork to setting up a foundation. We will investigate the status of your application, resolve any doubts related to the Registry of Foundations and, once it is up and running, accompany you in the legal management of the Board of Trustees and the deployment and security of its activities.
We move forward, as a team 🤝✨ Will you join us?
