Croatia's government on Friday sent to the Parliament a bill on political financing, introducing a series of new rules on funding election and referendum campaigns. Public Administration Minister, Lovro Kuscevic, said that the new bill is intended to improve transparency in politics.

The new legislation introduces for the first time exact definition of what constitutes referendum activities, and envisions using a computer system for monitoring the funding of referendum campaigns.

The new legislation also defines the criteria for determining the amount of funds which local authorities are supposed to earmark for financing political parties.

“The new bill will also proscribe a more equal distribution of budget funds given to political parties,” Kuscevic said.

According to the bill, from now on funds will be distributed to parties based on the number of seats won in the Parliament and in local level assemblies, based on the final election results. Under the current law, budget funding is distributed according to the state of affairs at the moment when legislation bodies are inaugurated.

In addition, any donations in excess of 5,000 kuna (€673) in value will require a formal agreement to be signed between donors and recipients.

The maximum allowed costs for an election campaign per party slate in the European Parliament election will be raised from currently 1.5 million kuna (€200,000) to 4 million kuna (€540,000), which is half of the amount for funding allowed in the presidential elections.

(€1 = 7.43 kuna)

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