Malta in league with Albania on party donations

Malta is one of three Council of Europe States which allow anonymous donations to political parties, one of two countries which do not require parties to keep proper accounts, and one of two countries whose law does not envisage any criminal sanctions against infringement of party financing laws.

This emerges from a thematic review of Greco's valuation of party financing laws of 39 Council of Europe members published last week.

The report notes that "few rare states allow anonymous donations". These include Albania, Denmark and Malta. Greece allows anonymous donations for amounts up to €600 while Romania, for donations up to 0.006% of the total amount of the State subsidy provided for in the State budget.

Malta and Ireland are the only countries whose laws do not require political parties to keep proper books and accounts.

"The same applies to Malta, where political parties and organisations affiliated to political parties or involved in electoral campaigns are not required to maintain accounts."

Most of the countries considered require party or candidate accounts to

be certified by auditors, who may operate under a variety of names. However, in some cases there may be no obligation for the accounts of political parties or affiliated organisations to be certified by an independent auditor. This is the case with Malta.

According to the report countries cannot lay claim to transparency of party accounts, if these are not published and are therefore inaccessible. Member States are to "require political parties regularly, and at least annually, to make public [their] accounts". 

This is not the case in 15 of the 39 countries surveyed. The report notes that in Malta only the  returns submitted by election candidates can be made public upon request.

The Council of Europe Recommendation calls on States to require the infringement of rules concerning the funding of political parties and electoral campaigns to be subject to effective, proportionate and dissuasive sanctions, three terms that traditionally appear in the wording of international documents.

But in the case of Malta and Albania their legislation does not provide for sanctions.

The report concludes that member states still have much to do to come into line with the Council of Europe Recommendations.

It also notes that the hoped-for improvements to legislation following these recommendations  are naturally the responsibility of individual governments, but not only governments.

"They require an input from all those involved in political activity, including parties and candidates".

Party financing saga

In a report issued in 2009, GRECO had called on Malta to introduce a general requirement for both political parties and election candidates to disclose all individual donations, including those of a non-monetary nature they receive above a certain value together with the identity of the donors.

In October 2011, a draft law on party financing proposed by the Maltese government and shown to Greco allowed anonymous donations made by political party members, and set a very high €10,000 ceiling for the publication of the names of other donors.

But after the publication of a report by Greco which shot down the proposed law, government backtracked insisting that the law was subsequently changed by MP Franco Debono and was being fine-tuned.

In January, a government spokesperson told MaltaToday that government intends to publish the draft Bill for public consultation after referral to the Parliamentary Group.

This preceded the parliamentary crisis following a government reshuffle and Franco Debono's call on the Prime Minister to resign. Subsequently, Debono presented his own private member's bill.

Debono's bill stipulates that political parties must register all donations exceeding €300 made from any one source in a calendar year.

When aggregate donations add up to more than €7,000, the names of the donors must be made public by being given to the Electoral Commissioner.

Donations of more than €50,000 in one year would not be permissible.

It makes no distinction between donations from party and non-party members whereas the draft seen by Greco makes party members exempt.