In view of the 2024 EU elections, the European Commission is gradually implementing its ‘European Democracy Action Plan’ (see EUROPE 12615/1).
On Thursday, 25 November, the European Commission took a major step forward on this issue by unveiling a legislative package that primarily aims to not only regulate online political advertising (see other news) but also better regulate European political parties and organisations and ensure better electoral participation by mobile European citizens.
The 10 European parties and 10 European political organisations registered to date should thus, by 2024, have to come to terms with some changes with regard to their status and funding.
The European Commission is, in fact, proposing to revise several points of the EU regulation on the subject—a relatively recent regulation which has been applied since 2017 but in which the European Parliament and the European Commission quickly identified a certain number of shortcomings.
Financial viability of parties
The European Commission has indicated that the proposal to revise the regulation that was presented on Thursday will, for example, have the primary objective of ensuring the financial viability of political parties.
One of the institution’s suggestions in that regard is notably to reduce the cofinancing rate imposed on European parties. This rate, currently 10%, could be aligned with the current rate for political foundations, which is set at only 5%. The European Commission even suggests allowing a 0% cofinancing rate in the year of elections to the European Parliament.
In general, the 10% rule currently in effect penalises smaller political parties, which find it more difficult than others to raise the resources needed to match this rate. Yet, the parties that are not able to reach the 10% cofinancing rate run the risk of being denied a part of the contribution from the EU budget that is reserved for them.
In addition, the European Commission is proposing that a new category of financial resources for parties and foundations be taken into account: income “created by the party or foundation activity” and thus coming from “own economic activities”.
Transparency of funding
While the European Commission wishes to set things right with respect to the financial viability of political parties, it also intends to mitigate the shortcomings regarding the transparency of their funding sources, in particular the donations they receive.
For all donations whose value exceeds €3,000, the institution proposes, for example, that the Authority for European Political Parties and European Political Foundation should be empowered, if in doubt, to request additional information directly from the donor so as to ensure the compliance of these donations. The European Commission also proposes to oblige the authority to make this information public.
Furthermore, in order to limit the risk of foreign interference, it is suggested that contributions from outside the EU should only amount to 10% of the total contributions, which may in turn only represent 40% of the party’s annual budget.
European parties and national parties
This upgrade of Regulation 1141/2014 is also expected to facilitate the interaction of European parties with their national member parties, the European Commission explains.
Moreover, the institution proposes that, “[in] order to enable European political parties to foster debates at national level on European matters”, European parties should be allowed to use EU budget funds in national referendum campaigns on issues related to the implementation of the treaties.
The future text could call on European parties to ensure that their member parties and organisations respect and observe “the values on which the Union is founded”.
In terms of “values”, the European Commission also suggests that, from now on, European political parties should be required to include their internal rules on gender equality in their statutes.
It would also like these parties to have to attest to a gender balance when applying for European funding.
Electoral rights of 13.5 million mobile citizens
The ‘Democracy’ legislative package presented this Thursday also aims to tackle the revision of the two EU directives governing the participation of EU citizens who reside in a Member State other than the one of which they are nationals in European and municipal elections.
According to data published by Eurostat in 2020, there are about 13.5 million of these “mobile citizens” in the EU. They have the right to vote and to stand as a candidate in elections to the European Parliament and in municipal elections in their Member State of residence. “Yet, their turnout is frequently lower than that of citizens who are nationals of the host Member State”, laments the European Commission.
It notes that in certain cases, EU citizens may vote twice in the same European Parliament election: once in their Member State of residence and once in their Member State of origin. In 2014, an exchange of data between Member States had made it possible to identify more than 213,000 multiple records.
Updating the two Directives should therefore ensure that mobile citizens are better informed about their electoral rights and that they are offered standardised templates for registering as a voter or candidate in all 27 Member States.
In order to reduce the risk of multiple voting, the European Commission proposes to define a common set of data to be collected and exchanged among the different national administrations. However, it calls for the removal of mobile citizens from their electoral roll of origin to be prohibited.
To consult the communication on protecting elections: https://bit.ly/3DTsSBQ; to consult the draft revision of the regulation on political parties and foundations: https://bit.ly/3cPh5IU; and to consult the draft revision of the directives on mobile citizens: https://bit.ly/3xo0DbR and https://bit.ly/3HTFT0t (Original version in French by Agathe Cherki)