Press-conference ‘The latest threats of members of Parliament initiative concerning changes of policy financing rules: the essential threats’ on 20 December of 2016

Experts of CPLR and IFES held a press-conference and told public about some risks of the Draft Law ‘On amendments to the Law of Ukraine ‘On political parties in Ukraine’ concerning an improving of government financing of political parties’. Initiators are the members of Parliament R.Knyazevych, O.Chernenko. I.Suslova, N.Novak (the faction of the Party ‘Block Petra Poroshenka’), who laid it before the Verkhovna Rada on 24 November of 2016.

Yuliya Shypilova, acting manager of IFES project, pointed out some aspects of passing of the Law concerning parties financing in 2015 and said that although the Law was not the best, but ‘propositions must be discussed and accorded systematically, and what are our deputies doing instead of this? Behind the closed doors they have drafted a bill №5446, which did not consulted relevant international recommendations and have been discussed with nobody’.

Dmytro Kalmykov, an expert of CPLR, noticed that legislation amendments were needed, but not such as the Draft Law №5446 introduced. For example, it prescribed that it was good if it would be implemented a statutory audit only for parliamentary parties, which got official financing. But ‘it is necessary to steer a middle course: requirements for being under audit for all Ukrainian parties has to be lower, – but not only the parliamentary parties must be under the audit. And beside that if the Draft Law № 5446 will be accepted, parties can expend public money not only on statutable activity, but also on an election campaigning. So, they will buy vote of electors for money, which have been got from their taxes’.

CPLR expert Olena Soroka spoke about that  the deputies did not solve the real problems of shadow financing of a policy and instead of that they handled only the problems, regulation of which were profitable for parties. The expert called for public to consolidate common efforts for exclusion the Draft Law of Knyazevych and join to a Claim, which developed against the Draft Law by CPLR and other NGOs.