OSCE holds summer school for journalists on party financing

The OSCE Mission to Moldova, in cooperation with the NGO IDIS Viitorul, opened on Thursday a two-day summer school for journalists on public financing of political parties and the role of media in raising transparency in political funding, in Vadul Lui Voda. The summer school brings together journalists from the right and left banks of the Nistru River, and Moldova’s autonomous territory of Gagauzia. The Mission said in a press release that the participants will learn from international and local experts about best practices and principles in funding political processes, including public funding as a tool to combat corruption and to secure political pluralism, and will hear about the experiences of other European countries with a publically financed party system. According to Deputy Head of the OSCE Mission to Moldova Jan Plešinger, media plays an important role in raising the transparency of the funding of political parties and in monitoring the implementation of relevant legislation. In the same context, Marcin Walecki, the Chief of the Democratic Governance and Gender Unit of the OSCE’s Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights and one of the summer school’s trainers, said that the media is an important watchdog and that party funding without media scrutiny will always be problematic. The Law on Political Parties of the Republic of Moldova, adopted in December 2007, regulated for the first time provisions on funding political parties from the state budget but due to the lack of an implementation mechanism and state funding, the implementation of this article has been postponed until 2015 for local elections and 2017 for parliamentary elections.