ODIHR Legal Reviews, Assessments and Guidelines

Summary: The opinion concludes that the series of amendments introduced to the Law on Political Parties, the Electoral Code and other laws relevant to the financing of political parties and electoral campaigns in the Republic of Moldova during 2015-2017 brought improvements in a number of issues and some previous recommendations of the Venice Commission and the OSCE/ODIHR were taken into account. The amendments strengthened inter alia disclosure and reporting requirements on political parties and electoral contestants, supervision and sanctions available in case of violation of the rules. That said, there remain several unaddressed recommendations from the 2013 and 2017 Joint Opinions and from past election observation reports. Furthermore, several concerns have been raised following the above-mentioned reforms. Moreover, the different amendments have led to some inconsistencies in the legal framework and introduced some provisions that are difficult to apply in practice and, thus, fail to be effective.

The Venice Commission and the OSCE/ODIHR recommend, inter alia, to permit private contributions, within clearly defined limits, by citizens of Moldova from their revenues obtained outside of the country, subject to adequate requirements of transparency and close supervision; to further reduce annual ceilings for private donations to political parties and to electoral contestants; and to strengthen the regime of sanctions available for infringements of party and campaign funding rules. Overall, a lack of comprehensive monitoring and insufficient enforcement of the rules seem to be the main concerns and the system of supervision and enforcement of the rules on party and campaign financing should be significantly enhanced.