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The Egyptian parliament on Monday approved amendments to a controversial law according to which human rights groups would impose strict restrictions on non-governmental organizations.
The changes come after President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi announced last November that the law should be more balanced.
"The House of Representatives has finally approved a number of important bills (including the draft law governing the work of civil society)," the parliament said on its website.
The new bill still prohibits foreign organizations from using their headquarters for "unauthorized activities", unspecified, according to a modified version of the law in the local media.
NGOs are also prohibited from transferring or receiving funds from persons or entities, other than predetermined sources, without official authorization.
The amendments remove jail sentences but provide for fines of up to one million Egyptian pounds (more than $ 55,000), according to local media reports.
Last week, 10 Egyptian human rights groups, including the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies, rejected the amendments, saying they were still too restrictive.
"The majority of the changes to the NGO bill are misleading and superficial," they said in a statement urging the international community to intervene.
The legislator Mohamed Abu Hamed however defended the modified version.
"The law (…) responds to all the concerns voiced by local and foreign civil society groups," the MP told AFP.
"This removes all restrictions on freedoms," he added, referring to the exclusion of prison sentences.
He added that local NGOs could receive foreign funds provided that the authorities have been informed and that the organization does not violate any law.
More than two-thirds of the 596 seats in Parliament approved the bill, but only six MPs rejected it, local media said.
"The project will be sent to the presidency for ratification," Abu Hamed said.
Foreign financing has been a controversial political issue since the 2011 revolution that toppled Hocris Mubarak, a longtime autocrat, in 2011.
Last December, a court acquitted 43 NGO staff, including Americans and Europeans, accused of receiving illicit foreign funds to stir up unrest during the uprising.
Sisi has been condemned by the international community for its crackdown on civil society groups since taking office in 2014, a year after the fall of Islamist President Mohamed Morsi.
Rights groups have regularly accused his government of human rights violations and repression of dissidents.
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