Political Party Financing in Croatia Lacks Transparency

Transparency International Hrvatska

Last Wednesday, May 10, 2006, Transparency International Croatia organized a round-table discussion in Zagreb, to discuss the topic of �Financing of Political Parties and Election Campaigns�.

The discussion concluded that the financing of political parties and election campaigns in Croatia lacks transparency, having in mind that the three existing laws that regulate these issues don�t cover the manner of acquisition of income an dfunds and don�t prescribe limits to campaign spending.

The introductory addresses were given by Violeta Liovic, TI Croatia President, and Slavica Radosevic from USAID, which supported this project through the AED NGO. In addition, the round-table discussion was visited by Antun Palaric, State Secretary of the Central Administrative Bureau, and Jorge Fuentes, the Head of OSCE Mission to Croatia.

Antun Palaric said that the issues of financing are partially solved in the Law on Financing of Campaigns for Presidential Elections, and that the financing of local level election campaigns was regulated in a satisfactory manner.

He emphasized that the work will start soon on the preparation of a complete Law on Financing of Political Parties, in compliance with the National Programme for Prevention of Corruption, adopted by the Government last month. At the moment, the whole drafting process is at the stage of collection and translation of similar laws applied in the countries of the European Union.

"This Law", said Palaric, "should regulate the matters of annonymous donations, set the upper limits for individual donations, access to public television and regulate the issue of non-monetary donations".

In his comments on the existing legislation, Hrvoje Matakovic from TIC emphasized that the Law on Political Parties has just five articles that deal with finances and financing. The greatest problem lies in the fact that no limit is set for donations and contributions, nor it defines which donations will be prohibited.

Matakovic believes its important for the new law to strictly forbid donations by commercial companies involved in any business relationship with the state, and to also set a limit for the total amount of donations in a single year.

Nemanja Nenadic, from Transparency International Serbia, said that the survey including over 100 national legislations showed that 72 countries have regulated the issue of political parties financing, while 39 countries lack such legislation. In most countries, the political parties are obligated to report donations, but only a small number of countries actually forbids annonymous donations.

Transparency Interantional Working Group prepared a draft-Law on Financing of Political Parties. Their proposals are available (in ppt format) on TIC website.