Following the last interview of the candidates for the presidential elections, and in relation to the question whether the state funding of parliamentary elections also covers the costs of presidential elections, I would like to clarify the following:
Until 2016 (the year of the parliamentary elections), the respective Budget included a clear separation of the sponsorship given to parliamentary parties into regular sponsorship, which ranged from €4 million to €4 million., (excluding the amount corresponding to the hiring of the services of parliamentary assistants) and an extraordinary sponsorship, which amounted to €2.6 million and concerned the financing of the parties for the conduct of the elections.
In the 2017 Budget, the sponsorship continued to be separated, but an additional paragraph was included in the relevant Note, which provided that an amount of €2.6 million would be allocated for the conduct of presidential elections.
The 2018 State Budget consolidated the two sponsorships, with the provision of the sponsorship amounting to €6.7 million per year. Since then, the sponsorship to the parliamentary parties was set at €6.7 million per year regardless of whether elections were held or not.
In essence, in 2018 not only were the sponsorships unified, reversibly including the sponsorship for the presidential elections, but the total sponsorship was increased since the €2.6 million, which was given only twice in a five-year period (Parliamentary and Presidential), was decided to be given annually integrated with the regular sponsorship. The total sponsorship, thus increased by 33% and now amounts to €33.5 million over a five-year period, compared to €25.2 million under the pre-2018 arrangement. It is for this reason that in August 2022, as Minister of Finance, I rejected a request from parties to the President of the Republic for an extraordinary grant for the year of the 2023 elections.
Under no circumstances can the claim by parliamentary parties that the state grant does not include a grant for the presidential elections be accepted.
In addition, we inform the following.
In 2021, an election year, Parliament removed from the Budget a note that 50% of the sponsorship would be given before and 50% after the elections, a note that had been included by the Government, and proceeded to pay the parliamentary parties, from the beginning of the year, the full available amount of the sponsorship.
In 2021, an election year, Parliament removed from the Budget a note that 50% of the sponsorship would be given before and 50% after the elections, a note that had been included by the Government, and proceeded to pay the parliamentary parties, from the beginning of the year, the full available amount of the sponsorship.
With the completion of the May 2021 parliamentary elections and the entry of new political parties into Parliament and the corresponding failure of others to secure parliamentary seats, as well as the diversification of parliamentary quotas, the Ministry of Finance, following an opinion of the Attorney General on questions raised by the Auditor General, informed the House of Representatives that it should proceed with the recovery of the subsidy granted at the beginning of the year and a recalculation of the amounts allocated to the parliamentary parties.
In order to facilitate the recovery process, the Ministry of Finance proceeded to calculate the amounts to be recovered and how they should be redistributed and informed the House of Representatives accordingly. Following information from the House of Representatives that after discussing the issue at a Conference of Party Leaders, it was decided that it would not proceed with any action to recover and redistribute the amounts, the Ministry of Finance requested the affected parties, AKEL, DIKO, Civic Alliance and Solidarity, to return to the Permanent Fund of the Republic the difference resulting from the incorrect allocation by the House of Representatives.
AKEL returned the amount due to it, DIKO and the Civic Alliance expressed their disagreement and Solidarity sent a request for a reduction of the amount recovered. The DPA has not received a state sponsorship for 2021. Subsequently, the Ministry of Finance took a series of actions aimed at recovering the overpayments of the sponsorship, and again addressed the Attorney General of the Republic for legal advice on how to handle the whole issue in order to safeguard the public interest. The position of the Ministry of Finance is that the funds should be returned.
(OP/EXP)
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