Seven million euros to be distributed to parties for elections

Parties for european elections will be funded with seven million, according to what was decided by the bipartisan committee which met today at the Ministry of the Interior.

The funding will be distributed according to election results of the 2009 elections, but also the results of the next election.

Specifically, 50% of the funding, or about 3.5 million, will be deposited in the accounts of the parties who elected MEPs during the last EU elections and will be distributed according to their rates back then.

10% of the funding will go to parties currently represented in the Greek Parliament.

The parties will be financed after the elections with the remaining 40%, depending on their success on the 25th of May's elections.

At the meeting, there was also a brief discussion of the regular financing of political parties. As stated later, the funding of parties from 2011 until today dropped by 85%.

In particular, according to evidence presented, funding for 2011 was 55 million euros, 31 million for 2012, 21 million for 2013 and it is estimated that it will be around 8 million for 2014.

During the meeting, there was also an initial discussion on how to distribute television and radio time allotted to parties. The conversation on this subject did not have any results, so it will continue on Monday.