EUROPEAN DIARY:With a second Lisbon referendum looming, funding rules should be tightened up
THE CAMPAIGN by Libertas to run candidates in every EU state in the upcoming European elections on an anti-Lisbon Treaty platform enjoyed mixed fortunes last week.
In the Czech Republic, Declan Ganley’s organisation announced that it would run a full list of 22 candidates headed by one of the two rebel Civic Platform MPs who recently helped to bring down the Czech government.
But in Germany the organisation’s local branch missed the deadline for registering for the elections and is now attempting to persuade the federal electoral commission to allow it to apply after the deadline.
The challenge of attempting to find suitable candidates in 27 EU states, meet registration deadlines and comply with the myriad of electoral laws across Europe is clearly affecting Libertas’s campaign. Its best chances of success in the elections seem to be in countries such as the Czech Republic and France, where it has teamed up with well-established politicians rather than trying to build a party from scratch.
Funding a pan-European campaign is expensive and complicated. Ganley says he needs €75 million to launch an effective campaign, although he has denied media reports that Libertas is bankrolling its Polish branch through a loan that neatly circumvents local electoral laws.
He has also denied reports that his organisation offered the Swedish Junilistan (June List) party almost €1 million to campaign under the Libertas brand in the elections in Sweden.
In Ireland last week, Libertas filed a return on its funding for last year’s referendum campaign to the Standards in Public Office Commission, although, as the body recently told the Government, the existing legislation governing third parties contains enough loopholes to make it ineffective.
But it is not just Libertas that has been able to wait almost a year before providing details on its spending on the referendum.
The European parliamentary groups, which funnelled cash through sitting MEPs for “information activities” such as posters and leaflets on the referendum, will not fully detail their spending until they publish annual accounts in June. Waiting a year to learn exactly who spent what on a referendum campaign is hardly satisfactory given the importance of its impact on the State and its Constitution.
Group funding was a hot issue during last year’s campaign, when Libertas claimed pro-Lisbon parliamentary groups were outspending the No campaign.
Figures supplied to The Irish Times by the seven main groups in the European Parliament – ahead of the publication of their accounts in June – show that together they spent €692,105 on activities related to the Lisbon campaign. Groups offering support to MEPs advocating a Yes vote outspent those backing MEPs campaigning for a No vote by about three to one.
The biggest-spending group was the European People’s Party and European Democrats, which estimates it gave €265,000 to its five Fine Gael MEPs to help them campaign. The Union for Europe of the Nations gave €100,000 to its four Fianna Fáil MEPs; the Socialists provided €100,000 for their single MEP; and the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats gave €9,108 to Independent Marian Harkin.
The two MEPs who campaigned against the treaty, Sinn Féin’s Mary Lou MacDonald and Independent Kathy Synnott, got backing of €37,997 and €180,000 respectively from their parliamentary groups, the European United Left/Nordic Green Left group and the Independence/Democracy group.
“We suspected the pro-Lisbon groups outspent the No campaigners but there was no way to prove it,” said Ganley. But pro-Lisbon campaigners could argue that the No campaign got a far higher percentage of cash from the parliament’s group system than they should have.
Eleven of the 13 Irish MEPs campaigned in favour of the treaty, so if cash was divided up in proportion to the number of Irish MEPs for and against the treaty, the split would have been €91,092 for the No campaign and €601,013 for the Yes side.
But with a second referendum looming, what is crucially important is that the funding rules on referendums are tightened up to give the public a clearer view of who is spending what on the campaign.
That responsibility lies with Minister for the Environment John Gormley, who will have to act fast to do it right.