TALLINN — The Estonian parliament is considering creating a government agency to regulate the funding of political parties to increase the transparency of its electoral system.

Currently Estonia has no government agency that handles political party fund-raising. Parties instead self-report their funding within a month after the elections, which organizations such as Transparency International have criticized as facilitating corruption.

The Riigikogu’s social affairs committee has decided that control over funding of political parties should be addressed by independent body whose activities must not conflict with the task of financing political parties.

“The new body would be largely responsible for collecting reports on political campaigns and the legality control if necessary, but also some kind of explanation and prevention,“ Urmas Reinsalu, chairman of the parliament’s social affairs committee, told Baltic Reports.

Reinsalu said that the National Audit Office of Estonia, the National Electoral Committee of Estonia or a commission that is part of the parliamentary body has been offered as alternatives. The proposed bill, likely to be called the Act of Political Parties, has yet to be finalized and proposed for a vote in the parliament.

“At some point, one or two of these institutions will end up in a conflict with either one requirement or another,” Reinsalu said. “Therefore it seems logical to me that if the way the independent electoral committee is set up feels reliable, then an organ for controlling the funding of political parties should be built up the same way. By that I mean that each independent organization that will control their own delegates. Then, this body would be independent, reliable and could operate independently.”

Not the first attempt

This is a not a new idea: the People’s Party of Estonia put forth a bill in 2007 to do the same thing, only to have it voted down. Likewise the Social Democrats and Greens created a similar draft this summer that made little headway.

Lauri Läänemets, Tallinn chairman of the centrist People’s Union of Estonia Party, agrees with the committee’s assessment but questions Reinsalu’s credibility on the issue. Reinsalu is a member of conservative Pro Patria/Res Publica Party.

“It’s important to have an independent body for controlling the budgets of political parties,” Läänemets told Baltic Reports. “The public must have some kind of overview of the parties who receive support, and in what extent those parties have been supported … I think that Reinsalu is not motivated by the values of his activities, but by his personal needs.”

The National Electoral Committee supports the creation of the funding regulator, as well.

” A commission that consists of specialists who are served by such an institution, whose officials have certain competence, investigative authority, and opportunities to conduct inspections, would perform financial control function more efficiently,” told Heiki Sibul, National Electoral Committee told Baltic Reports.

However, the Ministry of Justice disagrees that a new regulator is necessary, saying its functions would overlap too much with the National Electoral Committee.

“Creation of new regulator would take a lot of time,” Diana Kõmmus, ministry spokeswoman told Baltic Reports. “Besides, such an organ already exists in the National Electoral Committee, and they are also previously experienced in controlling the funding of political parties.”

Credibility is most important

Reinsalu asserts that the change is now needed to allow for greater political neutrality in the investigation of a funding violation.

“I’d be very careful in giving the parliamentary politicians such powers to conduct investigations on other parliamentary politicians,“ Reinsalu told Baltic Reports.

Reinsalu is worried that if politicians themselves exercise the supervision over such matters, then it’s difficult to expect the monitoring to be independent.

“It is important that the system would be effective, professional, reliable, and that it also would seem so,” Reinsalu said.