Poland’s electoral commission rejects financial report of far-right Confederation party

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Notes from Poland is run by a small editorial team and is published by an independent, non-profit foundation that is funded through donations from our readers. We cannot do what we do without your support.

Poland’s National Electoral Commission (PKW) has rejected the far-right Confederation (Konfederacja) party’s financial report for last year’s European elections after it found irregularities. The party also failed to submit the required documents on time.

As a result, Confederation could now lose millions of zloty in the state subsidies that it, like other political parties in Poland, receives. The party has already indicated that it will appeal against the decision.

Under Polish law, political parties that win at least 3% of the vote in parliamentary elections – or coalitions that achieve at least 6% – receive state grants and subsidies to help fund their activities.

They must submit annual reports on their finances for assessment by the PKW, as well as reports on spending in election campaigns. If they do so after the indicated deadline, they lose the right to receive state funds, even if the report itself is correct.

On Monday, the PKW unanimously voted to reject Confederation’s financial report from its campaign for the 2024 European Parliament election, at which the party came third in Poland with 12% of the vote.

Although media reports earlier this week claimed that the PKW’s decision was made due to Confederation submitting its report one day after the deadline, the formal justification released by the PKW today shows that the report was rejected due to financial irregularities.

The PKW found that the party had accepted money in violation of the Electoral Code. For example, one payment made to its electoral committee came from an individual – which is not permitted – and after the elections had taken place, which is also not allowed. This alone is grounds to reject the report, said the PKW.

The commission also found that Confederation made an unjustified expenditure on alcohol and failed to properly account for spending on campaign banners.

The PKW also noted that, when it sent questions to Confederation about its financial report, the party “provided answers to only some of them” and did so “in a perfunctory manner, not referring to the substance of these matters, not dispelling doubts on the issues that were the subject of these questions”.

The commission also noted that Confederation did indeed submit its report after the deadline. This on its own is reason enough to cut the party’s state subsidies, though not to entirely reject the report.

Confederation admits that it submitted the report late, but says that this was the result of technical issues with the online submission system.

Grzegorz Płaczek, head of Confederation’s parliamentary caucus, told the Polish Press Agency (PAP) that, once they receive the PKW’s official explanation for its decision, the party will “carefully analyse all the objections and address them, especially as very large sums of money may be involved”.

“We consider the decision of the PKW to be unfair and surprising. We will appeal against it to the Supreme Court,” added Płaczek. The party has the right to do so within 14 days from the publication of the PKW’s decision.

According to financial news website Money.pl, if the party fails in its appeal, it could stand to lose up to 26 million zloty (€6.2 million) during the current parliamentary term.

The state subsidies are paid out in quarterly installments, with this year’s first tranche arriving in April. The potential lack of such funds for Confederation could therefore impact its campaign for the upcoming presidential election, the first round of which is scheduled for 18 May.

Its candidate, Sławomir Mentzen, has recently risen rapidly in the polls, where his support is currently averaging around 18%. That puts him in third place, and close to second, which could see him make the second-round run-off on 1 June between the top two candidates in the first round.

The PKW has regularly rejected the financial reports of political parties, resulting in them losing state funds. In 2022, it rejected the report submitted for the previous year by the centrist Poland 2050 (Polska 2050) party, with the Supreme Court later rejecting an appeal against that decision.

Last year, the commission rejected financial reports submitted by the national-conservative Law and Justice (PiS), Poland’s largest opposition party.

That decision has become embroiled in controversy, however, with the Supreme Court overturning it but many members of the PKW refusing to accept that ruling because they argue that the Supreme Court chamber in question was unlawfully formed when PiS was in power.

Eventually, the commission voted to accept the party’s report but the payments have been withheld by the finance minister, who cited a lack of legal clarity about the situation.

Notes from Poland is run by a small editorial team and published by an independent, non-profit foundation that is funded through donations from our readers. We cannot do what we do without your support.

Main image credit: Silar/Wikimedia Commons (under CC BY-SA 4.0)

Agata Pyka

Agata Pyka is an assistant editor at Notes from Poland. She is a journalist and a political communication student at the University of Amsterdam. She specialises in Polish and European politics as well as investigative journalism and has previously written for Euractiv and The European Correspondent.