PS: Amendments to Bring More Transparency into Election Campaign Financing

Bratislava, 1 September (TASR) - The opposition Progressive Slovakia (PS) party is proposing measures to increase transparency in the financing of election campaigns, with its MPs Zuzana Mesterova and Martin Dubeci submitting amendments to the Political Parties Act in the parliament, TASR reported on Monday. In addition, rules should be tightened for political parties taking a loan to finance the campaign of a presidential candidate or of an independent candidate in municipal elections. As practice shows, even though the existing legislation includes control mechanisms, there are still shortcomings which reduce the effect of individual measures, they said. These include, for instance, insufficient enforceability of rules, circumvention of limits through third parties, non-transparent financial flows, and limited public access to complete and timely information on the financing of campaigns. According to the amendments, parties may not donate money from a loan to finance the election campaign of a presidential candidate or an independent candidate in municipal elections, unless the loan agreement had been published in a due and timely fashion. Also, the fine for a political party that failed to do so would be set at 30 percent of the amount of the loan taken, they added. The MPs also suggested that parties shouldn't be allowed to repay loans used for financing such campaigns from the contributions they received from the state budget. A new mechanism for the reduction of this contribution is proposed in order to prevent parties from breaching this requirement on a repeated basis. Furthermore, those candidates who received funds from a political party will be required to disclose the origin of such funds. jrg/mcs