On December 26, 2023, the Law of Ukraine "On Amendments to Certain Legislative Acts of Ukraine on Improving Public Financing and Control over the Activities of Political Parties" No. 3337-IX of August 23, 2023, came into force.
The document restores the obligation for political parties to submit reports after a nearly four-year break, which arose first due to COVID-19 restrictions and later due to the introduction of martial law. The obligation of the National Agency on Corruption Prevention (NACP) to verify the reports has also been restored.
"Transparency of funding and work of political parties and elections is a condition for their actions to be in the public interest. Therefore, parties must submit reports on their property, income, expenses, and financial liabilities. The NACP will start verifying the reports received, which will ensure that parties are financed only from legal sources and thus have equal rules for their competition in the favor of voters," said NACP Head Oleksandr Novikov.
Ensuring transparency of political funding is a necessity to fulfill Ukraine's international obligations, in particular European integration, as well as to implement the UN Convention against Corruption and the relevant GRECO recommendations, and is especially important in the context of martial law.
According to the law, parliamentary parties must submit reports for 2020-2022 by March 26, 2024, and other parties by April 26, 2024. It also provides for specifics of submission of reports for 2023, depending on the option of submission (quarterly or annual) and on the right to state funding: it can be March 26, 2024, or April 26, 2024.
For 2020, political parties must submit reports in paper form as well as electronically, with personal data protected. For other years, they must submit reports exclusively to the POLITDATA register. Among the changes, political parties can choose to submit quarterly or annual reports for the period 2020-2023.
Other novelties of the Law include the exemption of political parties from statutory liability for submitting incomplete and/or inaccurate reports during martial law in the presence of appropriate circumstances (loss of primary documents as a result of military operations caused by the armed aggression of the Russian Federation against Ukraine, etc.).
The Law regulates the placement of deposits. Thus, a party may place funds, including state funding, on a deposit account in national currency in a Ukrainian bank.
As a reminder, on October 10, the NACP restored access to the Unified State Register of Political Parties' Reports on Property, Income, Expenses, and Financial Liabilities, taking into account the requirements for personal data protection (POLITDATA).
The POLITDATA register is available here.
New informational materials are available here.
