Last week, the French Constitutional Council has rejected the presidential campaign accounts of 2012 of Nicholas Sarkozy. With this decision, the UMP (President Nicholas Sarkozy’s former party) will be loosing around 11 million euros in public funding. These loses have to be added to the 14 millions lost in public endowment after the last parliamentary elections, increasing the debt of the party to 46 millions euros. Beside that, the party has to refund the 153, 000€ it has received as an upfront payment.
On the 10th January 2013, Nicholas Sarkozy had appealed to the Constitutional Council, the National Commission of Campaign Accounts and Political Financing (CNCCFP) ‘s rejection of his campaign expenses. Following several hearings, the Constitutional Council has determined the amount of the campaign expenditures by Mr Sarkozy to 22,975,118€, which is 466,118€ in excess of the authorized amount for a candidate present at the second round, namely 22,509,000€. The candidate did not – or insufficiently – a total of 1,669,930€ into his campaign account.
Until relatively recently, regulating campaign financing was clearly not one of the top priorities of the French legislature. It was only in 1988 that France started to issue laws and decrees relating to the funding of political parties and election campaigns, twenty years after Germany and the Scandinavian countries. The rising costs of electoral campaigns primarily caused by the employment of new sophisticated means of communication, an increasing recourse to illegal sources of funding, the fact that France was lagging behind other European countries in this field, and several embarrassing scandals, led to the promulgation of two laws in March 1988. The aim was to “moralize” political life by prohibiting certain candidates’ practices, put a ceiling on electoral expenses, regulate public financing and private donations for electoral campaign and other political activities, and assure financial transparency in political life.
Contributions given by physical persons to one or more candidates for a specific election are authorized only during the year preceding the election. Contributions of more than €150 must be paid by check or online, with the donor duly identified. A physical person duly identified is allowed to contribute up to €4,600. Physical persons’ donations made to political parties or to election campaigns, and political party membership fees, give rise to a tax credit equal to 66 percent of their amount, with a limit of 20 percent of the taxpayer’s taxable income.
No legal entity is allowed to participate in financing a political candidate unless the legal entity is a political party or a political group. Financing is not allowed in any form whether direct, e.g., by donating money, or indirect, e.g., by rendering services or granting favors or advantages to a candidate’s political campaign by providing services and products below regular market fees or prices. Nor is a legal entity allowed to finance political parties or political groups. The intent of Parliament was to cut any link between the economic world and the political world. To compensate for this loss of funding, it sensibly increased public funding.
There is no limit to the amount a political party may wish to contribute to the campaign of one of its candidates other than the general ceilings on campaign expenditures.
Candidates in an election for the National Assembly who receive at least 5 percent of the vote on the first ballot are also partly reimbursed for their electoral expenses. The amount refunded is 50 percent of the allowable ceiling and cannot exceed the actual expenses as shown in the candidate’s campaign accounts. To benefit from this reimbursement, the campaign accounts of the candidates must first have been approved by the monitoring body, the CNCCFP.
All forms of paid commercial advertisement through the press or by any audiovisual means during the three months preceding an election are prohibited. The state provides free access to public radio and television for political advertisement for a certain amount of time during the official election campaigns.
One certainly has realised certain similarities between the French UMP and PN in Malta: both lost their latest elections leaving their party finances in a dire situation. While the financial situation of UMP is mainly linked to mal practice, a unhealthy relationship with private funding (one just need to read about the several court cases relating funding from Gaddafi, suspected funding from Liliane Bettencourt,..), PN’s financial situation resulted in the lack of funding it received from private person and from legal entities. Due to inexistent party financing laws in Malta, donations have been channeled to PL instead, as Malta’s perception of the political class is based on a cashback policy. Unfortunately the situation will remain unchanged unless the financing of parties and elections will be governed and audited by law and MPs become full time paid parliamentarians.
To conclude this article, the fact that the EU does not pressure Malta to create party financing laws, leaves me surprised.
More details on French party financing can be found here.
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