Poland’s Law & Justice (PiS) party was at risk of losing around PLN 100 million (€23.4 million) in subsidies for this term of the Sejm. According to Salon24, the Donald Tusk-led Civic Coalition (KO) was certain that the National Electoral Commission (PKW) would be consistent and not accept the PiS report for the presidential elections.
However, after the Supreme Court accepted the party’s appeal, PKW has cleared the way for PiS to receive funding ahead of the presidential election this spring.
The government camp assumed that in the meantime it would “bargain” with President Andrzej Duda to agree to the law authored by Poland 2050 that seeks to change the consideration of election protests and the validity of elections by the Extraordinary Control and Public Affairs Chamber of the Supreme Court in favor of the combined Criminal and Labor and Social Security Chambers. The majority elected by the current parliamentary majority considers the Chamber of Extraordinary Control illegal.
Today, despite many disputes during the National Electoral Commission meeting, it finally adopted the PiS financial report.
Minister of Finance Andrzej Domański will now have to pay money from the budget to PiS. The politician himself mentioned this in recent interviews, adding that although the Supreme Court’s decision is not binding on him, the resolution of the National Electoral Commission is. Today, the National Electoral Commission decided that PiS is entitled to money from the budget without any “cutting.”
The subsidy for Law and Justice, originally set at PLN 26 million per year, was drastically reduced after the National Electoral Commission (PKW) questioned some of the party’s campaign spending. The PKW imposed a fine of PLN 10.8 million on PiS for irregularities in spending PLN 3.6 million. As a result, the annual subsidy decreased to PLN 15.1 million, which affected the amount of quarterly installments, which fell from PLN 6.5 million to PLN 3.7 million.
Importantly, the Ministry of Finance suspended the payment of the subsidy for the third quarter, considering that the previous two installments totaling PLN 13 million exceeded the new, reduced limit.
Now, the Ministry of Finance has announced that for the fourth quarter, PiS will receive the remaining amount of PLN 2.1 million by Jan. 25, in line with the new amount of the subsidy.
PiS, led by Jarosław Kaczyński, had been threatened with the total loss of the subsidy provided for in this term of the Sejm. This would be a disaster considering the presidential campaign that will begin at any moment.
