Candidates contesting European Parliament elections will be able to spend up to €30,000 on their campaigns according to a proposal in a draft Bill to regulate political party financing, The Sunday Times has learnt.

Disclosure and transparency are the fundamental pillars of any law regulating party financing, as is effective enforcement

Sources said candidates contesting a general election would have their personal expense allowance increased to €10,000 from €1,400.

The proposals being considered by the government also speak of expense thresholds for candidates contesting local elections.

The sources said there would be three separate thresholds for local elections depending on the size of the locality being contested, with the largest being capped at €5,000 and the smallest at €3,000.

The issue of candidate financing came to the fore in the 2009 European Parliament elections when two Nationalist Party candidates took an oath before a magistrate in court declaring that their campaign expenses were in breach of the electoral law.

PN candidates Edward Demicoli and Frank Portelli had said in court that while their personal expenses were within the legal limit of €18,635, the support by third parties meant they surpassed it.

The expenditure limits set out years ago by the electoral law have often been described as outdated.

The Bill currently being fine-tuned will also establish monetary thresholds for donations to political parties. Sources said a decision still has to be taken on the maximum permissible amount for a donation to be legal and the threshold above which donors will have to be made public.

The Bill is being piloted by parliamentary assistant in the Office of the Prime Minister, Franco Debono. However, when contacted yesterday Dr Debono would not confirm the thresholds.

“We are fine-tuning the Bill and rather than getting lost in the thresholds the more important thing is to have the structure in place,” he said, speaking from New York where he was accompanying the Prime Minister on his visit to the UN General Assembly meeting.

In the US, Dr Debono met with the chair of the Washington-based Federal Election Commission, Cynthia Bauerly, on political party financing.

The commission is an independent regulatory agency tasked to administer and enforce federal campaign financing laws.

“It is clear from my talks with Ms Bauerly that even in a country like the US with a well-developed regulatory system, any law on party financing remains a work in progress that needs to be changed regularly as it gets interpreted by the courts,” Dr Debono said.

An important aspect highlighted in the talks, he added, was the fundamental principle that the identity of donors should be disclosed.

“Disclosure and transparency are the fundamental pillars of any law regulating party financing, as is effective enforcement,” Dr Debono said.

A government-appointed commission, chaired by former President Anthony Galdes and composed among others of members from the three main political parties, in 1995 proposed that donations above €11,647 be made public and donations above €23,294 be made illegal.

The commission also proposed state financing for political parties linked to electoral success and capped at 0.02 per cent of GDP.

The proposals never became law and the Nationalist Party at the time wanted higher thresholds.

Today, 16 years later party financing remains unregulated as the two largest parties have grown into large commercial organisations running their own television and radio stations and mobile phone services.

ksansone@timesofmalta.com

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