The law on party funding was adopted without taking into account the proposals submitted by civil society. Therefore, the representatives of the NGO sector consider this initiative loses its utility and efficiency.
The executive director of the Partnership for Development Center Alexei Buzu has told IPN that the MPs didn’t satisfy the demand to limit the cap on donations provided by private individuals and legal entities ato 20 and, respectively, 40 average official salaries and set a cap that is 10 times higher, of 200 and 400 salaries respectively. “The agreement was that the parties should accept less money from those who pursue economic goals, but will be able to get money from the state. Now they decided to accept money from private individuals and legal entities and from the state as well,” he said.
Alexei Buzu also said that civil society insisted that the allocation of money to parties from the state budget should depend on the number of women and young people promoted in Parliament, but this thing wasn’t respected either. “Without this element, the utility and efficiency of this law are much lower,” he stated.
Lina Grau, expert of the Foreign Policy Association, said the adoption of this law forms part of the recommendations made by the development partners to the Government on March 4. “I noticed that the development partners spoke about the possibility of implementing this law in the 2015 local elections too. But the law will take effect much later. Thus, our politicians respected a request, but did it astutely. They left a door open so that they could work as until now. The law will not be used in the local elections of this year,” she stated.
The MPs adopted the bill on party funding, which contains amendments to the Electoral Code and the Penal Code, in the final reading on March 19. The political parties can annually receive financing from the state budget through the Central Election Commission. The size of allocations is set in the state budget law and cannot be larger than 0.2% of the state budget incomes.
