Loss for secretive political parties at court – Win for transparency of political party funding

Parties of the Parliament have been ordered to disclose how much credit has been given to them by the state. They also have to make public which real estate properties have been acquired for their operations.

The HCLU and Figyelő (Hungarian printed and online news service) took the secretive Hungarian political parties to court, in order to find out the conditions and the spending surrounding credits funded by the Hungarian Development Bank.

In 2007, the MPs were in total agreement in giving political parties the opportunity to buy office space they were currently renting with the financial support of the state through the Hungarian Development Bank. All but one (MDF - Hungarian Democratic Party) of the HCLU’s and Figyelő’s enquiries went unanswered, citing bank and business secrets.

We have come across some interesting reasoning behind the denials: according to the MSZP (Hungarian Socialist Party), the requested data is convenient for ’misuse by people with bad intentions’ and would serve as a base for ’defamation campaigns against certain officials’ and political terrorism. The KDNP (Christian Democratic People’s Party), among other reasons, denied access to the data due to their exceptionally thrifty financial management, and having only 1 (one) paid employee. FIDESZ (Hungarian Civic Union) did not answer the data request at all and did not feel obligated to attend the court hearing.

On December 3rd, 2009, the Capital Court accepted the HCLU’s reasoning and ruled that the requested data must be made public, due to the funding being credited and guaranteed by the state and the property acquired by the parties by state funding belongs to the state. The Capital Court’s decision also states that transparency of political funding overrules bank secrets.

The HCLU considers today’s ruling to be an important step in paving the road to transparency of taxpayers’ money connected to political parties. Unfortunately, we would not be surprised in case our politicians decide to appeal the Capital Court’s decision…

Share

Related articles

The state, too, can access my phone records?

In its judgement, the Court of Justice of the European Union has declared the Data Retention Directive invalid. Based on the Directive, service providers were keeping phone records and other personal data for 6 months. We have decided to undertake the lengthy process of actually eliminating this European law in Hungary.

Why was the search of the whistleblower’s home unlawful?

In November, 2013 András Horváth, former staff member of the Hungarian National Tax and Customs Administration turned to the public with his information on companies committing VAT fraud with the assistance of the National Tax and Customs Administration (NAV). The whistleblower decided to seek publicity after several unsuccessful attempts to raise the issue within the Administration and the government. The revelations resulted in huge media coverage and created an unresolved political scandal ever since.

Proposed constitution is serious threat to right to information

In yet another assault on freedom of expression and information, the Hungarian government adopted a new Constitution on Monday 18 April which will abolish independent oversight of the public’s right to know.