The Central Election Commission (KQZ) will today approve the public financing for the different parties’ campaign expenses for the June 25 parliamentary elections. A total fund of 65 million lekë will distributed over the 18 parties that will participate in the elections. The largest part of the funding will arrive in the hands of the PD and PS, which won the largest number of votes in 2013.
In 2013, the PS won 713,000 votes and will be funded 28 million lekë (~€208,000), whereas the PD with 528,000 votes will receive 20 million lekë (~€149,000).
The third party in Parliament, LSI, will receive 7 million lekë, while the PDIU and PR will be awarded respectively 1.7 and 1.1 million lekë.
Parties that are not currently represented in Parliament, but take part in the elections receive an even lower sum.
The recent changes to the Law on Political Parties, specifically the articles that deal with the financing of the electoral campaign, clearly determine that a political party is not allowed to spend more money during the electoral campaign than 10 times the amount that it received from the state budget.
Political parties are allowed to spend money acquired from the state budget, its regular income, and donations not higher than 1 million lekë.
After the campaign, the parties have to hand in at the KQZ a full documentation of all expenses. If it turns out that the budget received from the state has not been completely spent, the remainder should be returned to the KQZ.
The new law also prohibits political parties from spending money on television advertisements. All TV channels, both public and private, have to dedicate specific amounts of time to free airtime for political parties. This has resulted in a strong protest of the private TV companies, which have started a legal complaint procedure.
