In 2015 Citizens Network Watchdog Poland, Stefan Batory Foundation, Stanczyk Foundation, Fundacja Wolności [Freedom Foundation], The Institute of Public Affairs and Association 61 undertook a topic that has been vivid since 2005 and which is financing of elections. That time the presidential ones.

Article 125 of the Election Code states that financing of the election campaigns is public (transparent), while Article 140 obliges the election committees, participating in the electoral campaign, to keep an up to date record of all the payments received from individual persons on their website, as well as registers of all loans taken out[1].

However, contributions from individual persons and bank loans are not the only legal way of financing election committees of presidential candidates. The committees may also receive financial resources from election campaign funds of political parties.

In the past presidential elections of 2010 the resources coming from the election campaign funds of political parties were the sole source of financing for: Bronisław Komorowski’s election committee, Jarosław Kaczyński’s election committee, Andrzej Olechowski’s election committee while Waldemar Pawlak’s and Grzegorz Napieralski’s election committees depended on those funds in approximately 99%.

It is very likely that the same issues arise during the 2015 presidential elections ie. That the election committees will be financed mainly through the election campaign funds of political parties. While according to the regulations of the Act on Political Parties, information regarding contributors who are currently making donations will be publicly accessible, when the parties financial statements are submitted to the State Election Commission in spring of 2016!

This means that the voters won’t know who financially supports the presidential candidates through the campaign funds of political parties, during the 2015 elections. This problem was already highlighted by the Stefan Batory Foundation during the presidential campaign of 2005. [2]The need for more frequent submission of financial statement, concerning payments received by political parties, was also present in a report drawn by the Group of States Against Corruption (GRECO) operating with the Council of Europe, published in December 2014. The report dealt with implementation of the recommended solutions regarding transparency of financing political parties in Poland[3].

Therefore we ask all political parties that financially support candidates in the upcoming presidential elections, to systematically publish on their websites information about the donations they receive during the campaign, if their total value exceeds the amount of the minimum wage (a solution identical to the regulations of Article 140 of the Election Code).

[1] Article. 140 § 1 of the Election Code: The Committee is obliged to keep records of:

loans, including the name of the bank granting the loan and all the essential conditions for its recovery, in particular: the date of the loan, its amount, interest and other costs of its acquiring, guarantors, and the date of the commitment to be repaid;

[2] payments from single individual of a value exceeding the amount of the minimum wage, defined

under the Act of 10 October 2002 on minimum wage, as applicable on the day preceding the announcement of the date of elections, indicating the name, surname and place of residence of such person

Source: http://www.sejm.gov.pl/prawo/kodeks/kodeks.htm

Presidential elections 2005. Monitoring of election campagin funds, Stefan Batory Foundation, Warsaw 2006.

[3] Third Evaluation Round. Addendum to the Second Compliance Report on Poland. “Incriminations ETS 173 i 191, GPC 2) ”. “Transparency of Party Funding” GRECO, Strasbourg 2014.