Home > 2.6 Campaign finance > ARMENIA - Joint Opinion on the Draft Amendments to the Legislation Concerning Political Parties
 
 
 
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Paragraph 36
 

Article 14 of the draft amendments amends Article 26 of the Law to repeal the public funding scheme currently in place in Armenia and replace it with a new system of distribution of public funds. Currently Article 26 paras 2 of the Law stipulates “[t]he total amount of funds provided for by the State Budget of the Republic of Armenia for funding of political parties may not be less than the product of 0,04-fold of the minimum salary prescribed by law and the total number of citizens included in the electoral lists during the latest elections to the National Assembly” .The new proposal establishes a two per cent threshold for political parties in parliamentary elections to receive public funding (as opposed to the current three per cent threshold in Article 26 para 3) and introduces a staggered mechanism of distribution of public funds starting with the amount of one minimum salary for each vote in case of receiving two to five per cent of the votes and decreasing the amount for each vote the more votes a political party receives.42 It is welcome and in line with the Guidelines on Political Party Regulations that the minimum threshold for receiving public funding is lowered in the draft amendments and that the public funding allocation scheme proposed particularly supports smaller parties and, hence, promotes political pluralism.43 Article 23, as stated in the explanatory note provided to the authorities, entitles all parties which took part in the last elections of the National Assembly to obtain state financing up to the next convocation of the National Assembly.


42 Article 14 para 3 of the draft amendments.
43 The Guidelines on Political Party Regulation state in para 187 “It is in the interest of political pluralism to condition the provision of public support on attaining a lower threshold than the electoral threshold for the allocation of a mandate in parliament.”