Monitoring of political advertising and of financing of electoral political campaigns

1. The monitoring of political advertising and of the financing of electoral political campaigns shall be carried out during the period of an electoral political campaign until the proclamation of the final results of an election.

2. The monitoring of political advertising shall be carried out by the Central Electoral Commission and constituency and municipal electoral committees.

3. The procedure and methods of monitoring of political advertising shall be determined by the Central Electoral Commission.

4. When carrying out the monitoring of political advertising and of the financing of electoral political campaigns, the Central Electoral Commission shall have the right to purchase monitoring services under the procedure laid down by legal acts.

5. The Central Electoral Commission shall constantly publish on its website the summarised data on monitoring of political advertising and of the financing of electoral political campaigns. The controlling authorities must, within their remit, be provided with detailed monitoring data; a campaigner shall be entitled to receive only the monitoring data pertaining to the participant’s electoral political campaign.

6. The Central Electoral Commission shall have the right to request the Radio and Television Commission of Lithuania, the Commission of Ethics in the Provision of Information to the Public and the Inspector of Journalist Ethics for the evaluation of the content of disseminated information in the light of political advertising. The Central Electoral Commission shall also have the right to request the Radio and Television Commission of Lithuania and the Inspector of Journalist Ethics for the assessment whether the means of manipulating the social media platform accounts have been used during the electoral political campaign.

7. Upon establishing that a campaigner has exceeded the set amount of electoral political campaign expenditure, the Central Electoral Commission shall, by its decision, obligate the campaigner not to assume new property obligations regarding electoral political campaign expenditure, with the exception of a contract with an audit firm or an auditor, provided the independent campaigner incurs an obligation set out in Article 123(1).

8. A campaigner shall have the right to appeal to the Supreme Administrative Court of Lithuania against the adopted decision, referred to in paragraph (7), within seven days of the adoption of such decision. The complaint must be investigated no later than within three days of the receipt thereof. The decision of the Supreme Administrative Court of Lithuania shall become effective from its pronouncement.