No donations over €40,000 - AD on party financing

Alternattiva Demokratika agreed 'in principle' with the white paper on the financing of political parties but expressed its reservations on a few issues, mainly that the electoral commission should not be the sole regulatory authority and that the threshold of donations should be capped at €40,000.

"We do not think that this is acceptable," said deputy chairperson Carmel Caccopardo who, along with AD chairperson Arnold Cassola, had just emerged from a meeting with Justice minister Owen Bonnici. "Historically, the Commission has been built on the two main political parties and it is not fair that the decisions which they make encapsulate all the other smaller parties."
AD instead suggested that this role be carried out by the Commissioner for Standards in Public Life, appointed with the concurrence of two thirds of the members of parliament.

"This is not just a person of integrity but also a person who is acceptable to a very wide segment of the population," he said.
Caccopardo added that the white paper went into too much detail on how political parties should be organized, and suggested that there should be more focus on how the size and access to resources are not factored in.

He said that whilst AD agreed with the proposals that the accounts of political parties should be audited, it did not adequately distinguish between large parties and small ones. "AD's turnover does not exceed €15,000 per annum," he said. "And so we are proposing that relative to political parties whose turnover does not exceed €100,000 per annum, audit fees will be shouldered by the regulator."

On his part, the green party's chairperson Arnold Cassola said that the "core issue" concerned the donations allowed to political parties and their regulation. "The thresholds proposed in the paper are too high," he said.

"Alternattiva Demokratika believes that whilst donations of less than €4000 per annum should remain confidential, donations between €4000 and €40,000 should be made public by the regulator. It should not be possible to donate more than €40,000."

Cassola added that the white paper did not consider loans made to political parties and 'ignored' the possibility that loans could be used to camouflage donations.