site.btaPresident Imposes Vetoes Revisions to State Budget Act 2019 Relevant to Party Funding

111 POLITICS - PRESIDENT - VETO - BUDGET

President Imposes Vetoes Revisions
to State Budget Act 2019
Relevant to Party Funding


Sofia, July 16 (BTA) - President Rumen Radev has returned for new discussion texts in sections 2 and 3 of the Bill to Amend the State Budget Act 2019, which allows for funding political party with donations from legal persons and sole traders, the head of state's Press Secretariat said on Tuesday.

Radev hails the civic position declared at a national referendum by over 2.5 million Bulgarians for reducing the amount of state subsidy for parties. However, the revisions with which Parliament allowed funding by legal persons and sole traders undermine the constitutional foundations of Bulgarian democracy. The constitutional model of the political system is being changed without any amendments to the Constitution, the press release said.

Further, the document states that these revisions make the parties dependent on businesses that will fund their existence. Thus, instead of fulfilling their constitutional role to form the political will of the people, parties are legally bound to the profit of economic entities, part of which will be returned to them as donations. Democratic governance becomes questionable when parties and candidates are not held responsible before the people, but before their donors.

Such funding creates abundant possibilities for corruption. This means a return to practices that were discarded ten years ago under European pressure. Official dependence of political parties on corporate interests distances Bulgaria from democratic European countries, the press release says further.

Conditions are being created to channel donations from legal persons and sole traders towards the parties in power, for it is they who distribute public funds and determine the winners of public procurement and concessions. The rest, particularly the small parties, will be pushed aside to the periphery of political life.

On July 4 Bulgaria's Parliament cut the state subsidy for political parties from 11 leva to 1 lev per valid vote won at the latest parliamentary elections, as proposed by the government. This was done at the second reading of amendments to the 2019 State Budget Act. The State Budget Act amendments, which entail revisions to the Political Parties Act, further stipulate that political parties will be able to receive donations not only from natural persons but also from legal persons and sole traders. This gives the parties an additional opportunity to raise funding for their activities, making up for the reduction of the subsidies./LI/BR

/МЙ/